


Until Human Voices Wake Us

by Chaed, spacelaska



Series: I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Bruce Is a Good Bro, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Tony Stark, Multi, Not Cap Friendly, Not Steve Friendly, POV Multiple, Panic Attacks, Past Torture, Pepperony - Freeform, Public Relations, Snarky Strange, Team Iron Man, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Tony Stark Has Daddy Issues, Tony Stark Has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Unresolved Sexual Tension, rhodey is a dead bro, seriously everyone is so messed up read at your own risk, stephen strange is a total penis, unhealthy everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2019-07-29 21:22:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 31
Words: 89,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16272602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaed/pseuds/Chaed, https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacelaska/pseuds/spacelaska
Summary: First Steve betrayed him. Then he condemned him to something worse than death. So why did he show up out of the blue to save his life?Tony might be home now, he might be safe, but he's not OK. Not by a long shot.Don't believe everything you read in the press. Tony Stark is spiraling.And if he's going down, he'll pull Steve with him. After all, misery loves company.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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Being back in New York was a strange feeling. Something momentous had happened in his absence and the world was failing to acknowledge it. He felt as though there should be a tangible change to the place. And if this was how Bruce felt, it was anybody's guess what was going through Tony's head.

Tony was coming along in a slow drift, an ice plate breaking up and floating away in pieces, with some of these pieces headed towards increasing stability. Physically, he was as close to recovered as he was going to get, although his days of peak fitness were certainly behind him. Mentally, it was still an uphill struggle, slow and exhausting.

Tony claimed he was doing better though, and everyone entangled in his long-winded recovery hoped he was telling the truth. Bruce was no exception, even with his internal pessimism advocating that a lot of those perceived improvements had to do with the architectural structure and acoustic insulation of Stark Tower. Three floors of separation saved Bruce from waking up if, or when — and it was probably the latter — Tony was haunted by nightmares. Ever since his discharge from the island his personal traumas were largely between himself, Pepper and JARVIS, with hand-picked morsels shared among the host of therapists Pepper made Tony see.

Bruce preferred to keep out of these things. He’d had his share of playing pick and choose with Tony’s issues for eight grueling months of a SHIELD-prescribed house arrest. At times it had felt like fooling around with Pandora’s box. He’d been more than happy to hand off the psychiatric side of therapy to the people Pepper had hired; the best of the best in their respective fields, and trustworthy enough — no doubt after being buried in bulletproof NDAs — to sort through whatever Tony was willing to share.

Besides, Bruce had his own can of traumatized worms to tend to. Pepper had asked him exactly once if he was doing all right, if he was dealing with things, if he was getting professional help. He’d nodded, then shrugged, and that had been the end of a one-time offer of support between friends.

To be frank, it was still sometimes overwhelming, being back in the hustle and bustle of the city, after existing for so long in the bubble of Tony's secluded recovery, just Bruce and Pepper and Tony, and Tony’s demons. Tony struggled with it too, the noise and the haste and the crushing humanity of a metropolis like New York City. Bruce had heard heard him voice his yearning to go back to Malibu on more than one occasion. He didn’t want to be stuck in an ivory tower overlooking Manhattan, he said, but it wasn’t as easy as notifying the authorities of a change in address. There were endless media appearances. Pepper had to be there for the company. Not to mention all the legal issues that Bruce couldn’t even begin to wrap his head around. There wasn’t much precedent on what to do when lost-in-space billionaires suddenly returned from the dead.

Tony didn’t seem to care much about his estate, or his juridical unicum. If anything, he was more than content to let Pepper handle the formalities while, in flashes of the lost boy insecurity that he tried to hide, he continued to feed the public’s unerring hunger for their triumphant hero’s return. Bruce was struck with an uneasy admiration for Pepper and her PR team's ability to weave whatever narrative they wanted to, and by how frighteningly willing the public were to swallow it.

So while behind closed doors Tony was very much still limping in the direction of recovery (and occasionally digging his heels in against it like a recalcitrant toddler) what was shoveled down the public’s throat was a wholly different, carefully crafted story. It was a jarring contrast to see Tony on television, his appearances slick and stage-managed to put him in the best possible world-is-his-oyster light, and then compare it to the slumped figure with the eye rings sitting across the table from Bruce most mornings, poking listlessly at his nutritional plan approved oatmeal.

There were, of course, conspiracy nuts, a vocal minority who believed that Tony had been a myriad of places, but never to space. Some of the less sane gossip magazines — the ones that ran headlines like _Tom Cruise ate my kitten!_ — printed everything from Tony riding out the war in a luxury bunker, to going into a four year stint of rehab and losing his arm from injecting heroin, to the inevitable few that proclaimed him a reincarnated messiah sent to save humanity from its fateful demise.

Not a single one ever came close to what had actually happened.

The vast masses were content enough believing Pepper’s palatable lie: a two man rescue effort carried out by Steve Rogers and James Rhodes after picking up a SOS signal of Tony’s mutineered Chitauri spaceship, with Rhodes’ death a silent and quick tragedy in result of a hull breach. It was a story of hope and hardship, and American patriotism. It was sold so convincingly, was so all-pervading in the media, that sometimes Bruce caught himself doubting his own memories.

His relationship with Tony had morphed into a strange, completely unprofessional hybrid of physician, employee and (possibly) friend, although often the latter felt more like enabler. When Tony wanted something that wasn't necessarily in the best interests of his recovery — and Tony was a desirous individual if Bruce had ever seen one — he’d relentlessly harangue Bruce into defeat and reluctant agreement. Then he’d go on and use the ‘my doctor says it’s fine’ argument with Pepper, who voiced legitimate doubts over whatever mad brainchild Tony conceived.

As a matter of fact, Tony was very hard to say no to. His personality was a tour de force that bulldozed any reasonable counterpoints, if only through sheer persistence. It was easier, in the end, to just give in on most things.

Having said that, being employed as Tony's personal physician was certainly a lot better than whatever Nick Fury might have had in mind for Bruce, especially given that the number on his days-since-last-incident tally was a lot lower than anyone was comfortable with. He was pretty sure a medical degree obtained in Smack Dab Nowhere, Eastern Europe didn’t qualify to practice in the United States, and he’d pointed this out to both Pepper and Tony, but ultimately Pepper had simply waved her magic wand, and it had been no issue at all. She was good at making obstacles disappear. And there were a lot of obstacles in the path of Tony’s recovery.

Despite his nominal title as Tony’s MD and the brief weekly physicals, most of Bruce’s day-to-day job consisted of checking in with his one and only patient, asking him if he felt fine, and hoping that he wasn't lying when he said yes. Sometimes he'd get to hang around in Tony's workspace too, but that was an invitation-only event, and thus occurred sporadically and usually without much of a prior notice. Unfortunately, these days Tony lacked a lot of the focus his advocates had always lauded him about. Half of his project ideas were absurd — the non-compos-mentis kind of absurd, not the brilliantly-gifted-wunderkind absurd.

His latest viable obsession revolved around designing and developing a prosthetic arm. Although the PR wizards propagated it best to soldier on with the full amputee look while sympathies ran high, Tony had quickly decided that there was no current technology in existence which suited his exacting standards, and set it upon himself to fill this gap in medical technology. On the upside, working on robotic arm schematics was actually very close to fun, something that had recently been in short supply in Bruce’s life. But while Tony was good company on his more stable days, there was always a vague doubt at the back of Bruce's mind, the question of how his life had ended up revolving solely around Tony Stark. And when it would stop.

Bruce had begun working for Pepper and Stark Industries after Tony went missing during the Battle of New York, with the naive promise to himself that it was only a temporary arrangement. But days had stretched into months, and months into years. Then there had come the distress signal, and the mission, and the postscript on the island, and somehow Bruce had become, as Tony liked to put it, part of the furniture. Most of Tony’s close relationships seemed to be with people on his payroll. Bruce liked Tony, but he didn’t want to transform into a better educated version of Happy Hogan.

Despite all the best intentions in the world however, he kept ending up in places he didn’t really want to be. Case in point, the present moment.

There were several things which should have given away that this wasn't going to be as fun as Tony insisted. The first was the golden rule of medicine. All neurosurgeons were, without exception, total fucking sociopaths. This was established and completely generalizable truth, and had nothing to do with professional jealousy over the fact that Stephen Strange, PhD, MD, had graduated from Harvard and interned at Johns Hopkins. Bruce reassured himself that he could have gotten into HMU as well if he'd wanted to, if not for the stumbling block of being a fugitive and on the run from the US military.

Of course, if he hadn't turned into an unwilling émigré he'd still be a world-leading authority on gamma radiation, and would have never been tempted to pursue a second career at the State University of Medicine and Pharmacology in Chisinau, Moldova.

The second clue was the fact that this Strange character had canceled their meeting twice at the very last minute without apology. Someone who felt that their time was so valuable that they were comfortable jerking around Tony Stark of all people was not someone you wanted to sit down with for a polite chat and a cup of tea.

The third, and most glaring red flag, was Dr Strange’s office. Even by the bar that Bruce had become accustomed to from working at Stark Industries, the place was ridiculous, a monument to overpriced furniture and an accompanying rampant ego. The guy had put up framed newspaper cuttings of himself, for Christ's sake.

The pale, dark haired surgeon had the semblance of a praying mantis, all long neck and spindly limbs, with piercing, insect-like eyes. A combination of smugness and boredom radiated off Dr Strange in waves. Something about his cadence set Bruce's teeth on edge.

“I have a twenty minute gap in my schedule,” Strange said with the air of a man who didn't have much patience for people and things he considered beneath him. Bruce suspected that Strange’s definition of that diction ran a fairly extensive list.

The fact alone that they had to reschedule four times, twice on Strange’s behalf and twice on Tony’s (because he could be a dick too), hinted at this entire cooperation being a headache waiting to unfold. Bruce was quickly learning that Tony, or at least the part of him that was still his old self, really enjoyed winding people up. Usually, that ended up in a personality clash of the snappy kind.

Still, despite the fact that if Stephen Strange was chocolate he would eat himself, they were here because he was the best chance at bringing Tony's idea of a new hand to life. Bruce wasn't ashamed to acknowledge his own limitations as a doctor, and advanced neurointegration of robotic prostheses was where he drew the line.

He’d been cheerleading Helen Cho's usefulness ever since he'd met her at a conference in Denver earlier that year, while they'd been scoping out potential collaborative avenues. He thought that she was a much better and safer option, but Tony was impatient. He wanted a working solution now, not in the ten years it would take for printable tissue to reach the stage of limb regeneration.

“I might have something that tickles your fancy,” Tony opened, reclining in his seat. “Ever seen Return of the Jedi? Luke Skywalker’s robot arm? I’m looking for someone who can attach it.” He pointed to his folded-up sleeve. "To this. Are you that guy?”

“No,” Strange said bluntly.

“Oh well, that was quick then,” Bruce muttered, pushing his chair back and making to stand.

“No, I have not seen Return of the Jedi,” clarified Strange, pinning Bruce with a glare. Strange’s lips were faintly curled up around the edges, like he was enjoying the sound of himself speaking. “But yes, I can almost certainly do the neurointegration required to attach your prosthesis. Assuming your design lives up to your reputation. You have been out of the game for some time, I hear.”

He eyed Tony as though he was making a series of judgments, and not all of them were favorable. “Are you as good as your publicists make you out to be? Or am I going to be disappointed that I rearranged a lunch reservation for this?”

“Look, Dr Phil,” said Tony with a distinctly barbed undertone. “I don’t do almost certainly, and I don’t do it over stood-up lunch dates.”

The media loved to paint Tony as the gamesome party boy, but Bruce reminded himself that he'd taken control of a multi-million dollar company in a cutthroat proxy fight at age twenty-one, and then fought his way out of the clutches of a terrorist cartel on his own. All of that didn’t even begin to cover the space part. Stephen Strange probably ranked fairly low on Tony’s list of challenges, especially today, when he was on good form.

“You obviously have a compelling resume.” Tony gestured loosely at the display of certificates and accolades meant to intimidate lesser minds from behind their spotless glass frames. “What I’m not seeing here is proof of any trailblazing innovations in robotics, so let’s not pick at PhDs outside your claim to fame. The engineering part is up to snuff. It works, if an appropriate interface can be established.”

He jabbed an accusatory finger at the copper name tag on Strange’s desk. “ _Your_ publicists claim you have the je ne sais quoi to pull off my hat trick. Your critics advise me I’m better served ransacking the Nine Provinces for service, where they still class for skills on the operating table as opposed to prize cups at award galas. So how about you lay off the airs, and we talk business?”

Strange narrowed his eyes for a few long moments, probably weighing up whether to throw them both out or not. Then he relented with a sigh.

“Show me what you have.”

His tone still had that bored edge to it, as though he was politely biding his time at a dinner party, and not quite doing a great job of hiding his misgivings. Bruce really, really thought they should have gone to Seoul. But, as Tony kept reminding him, they weren't here to make a new friend, they were here to get Tony set up with a totally sweet Luke Skywalker robot arm. Or something. Bruce had also never seen Star Wars.

He pulled out his laptop, and brought the schematics up on the screen, passing it across the desk to Strange. “We thought that implantation of a multi-electrode array into the primary motor cortex, and remote linking it to the prosthesis should—”

“Stop talking.”

Strange looked at him with what could only be described as a withering glance. Bruce felt the tips of his ears grow warm.

“I'm not using multi-electrode arrays. They're primitive. This isn't a middle school science project. I thought you came to me because you wanted to do something groundbreaking.” He wondered aloud, “Who even are you? The chauffeur?”

Bruce opened his mouth, but Strange cut him off impatiently.

“For fine motor control you want something more sophisticated than a remote controller stuck in your skull.” This was directed at Tony. Strange looked at the screen, narrowing his eyes. He drummed his long fingers on the table. “You want to interface the nerve endings to the prosthesis itself.”

“But that's not—” Bruce began, cue the compulsory cut-off.

“Not possible?” Strange arched an eyebrow. “Not possible without two things. One, a complex, working prosthesis, which takes into account the existing neuroanatomy of the hand… which you seem to more or less have here.” He paused. “Although I'll be sending you a few notes on improvements.”

Jesus, what a _prick_.

“And two, a biocompatible polymer, which acts as an interface between the severed nerve ends and the device itself.”

“Which doesn't exist,” Bruce pointed out.

“But which can,” corrected Strange. “I have several ideas. I lack the time and scientific resources to work on them. You seem to have both in abundance, Mr Stark.”

Tony didn’t let on whether he was on board, or fighting the urge to strangle Strange. He fished out a Stark pad and laid it on the table next to the laptop.

“Holo mode,” he instructed, and a 3D projection sprung up. “You’ve been listening in, Jarv? Can we do the polymer thing?”

The main window miniaturized and gave way to JARVIS’ real-time investigation. He listed several sources, including some of Strange’s own publications.

“Biofunctionalization of nerve interface via polymeric implants has not passed the theoretical research stage at this point,” JARVIS concluded. “Peripheral innervation would have to meet certain standards to provide a suitable port for proper modulation of stimulus frequency and amplitude. This could be circumnavigated by a cortical implant, albeit at the risk of restricted proprioception in exchange for higher treatment success, if physiological compatibility were the main marker.”

Strange looked suitably startled and impressed at JARVIS popping out of nowhere. Bruce felt like this was a small point for Team Stark. On screen, the perspective changed from prosthesis schematics to an overlay of a three-dimensional reconstruction of Tony’s arm and the neural interface according to Strange’s vague specifications.

JARVIS highlighted several problematic areas. “N ulnaris received extensive damage during the initial lesion. The most favorable integration point would be a further two inches medial of the current terminus…”

He continued to list other factors. Bruce watched as Tony's eyes glazed over slightly. He wondered if maybe he should say something before Tony drifted off too far, but JARVIS took that one out of his hands.

“I must stress, sir, that at this time there are no reliable substances available of fulfilling all listed requirements. Further research and experimental trials are needed to find a suitable carrier for a proper nerve-implant conduit.”

“No, no, you're misunderstanding.” Strange shook his head. “You're still thinking too crudely. I'm not proposing we insert a chunk of metal into the nearest biggish ganglion and hope for the best. Yes, it would work, but you're also going to spend the rest of your life feeling like you've got a robot hand, and that's not what you want. You'll get better fine motor function if you—”

“Individually fuse the existing nerves to corresponding nerve-like structures on the prosthesis. Essentially like a real arm,” Bruce finished up, because the clip-off game could be played by two. “But that leaves two problems: the polymer, and the extent of the existing nerve damage.”

“The latter can be overcome if we use gene therapy to get the cells to release an enzyme, say, chondroitinase ABC, to break down the scar tissue, and then PCAF, a transcription factor, which aids regeneration of peripheral axons.”

Although Strange was talking about some pretty experimental treatment, he acted like he was explaining something obvious to a child. “For a suitable biocompatible polymer you could start with something like polydimethylsiloxane. You'd just have to address—”

“The conductivity problem?” Bruce blurted out again. He couldn't seem to help himself.

“What does your AI think?” Strange asked Tony, with a faint hint of sarcasm in his tone.

The beauty of JARVIS was that he didn’t need Tony’s permission to talk. JARVIS addressed Strange directly by pointing out flaws and improvement suggestions. The guy might be good, but he was no match against JARVIS’ encyclopedic expertise. Bruce found it really hard not to grin as JARVIS took Strange to school. He wondered how long it had taken for Strange to come up with a hypothesis that JARVIS stripped down and refined in a matter of seconds.

“Enhanced biocompatibility of PDMS may be achieved by ion irradiation. The irradiated samples, according to an in-vivo study, show an increase in viable cell count of up to six-hundred-fifty percent. I would also suggest supplementary treatment with exogenous BDNF in addition to chondroitinase application. Taking into account an error margin of one-point-four percent, my calculations yield a two-hundred-forty-five percent increase in treatment success, provided the required polymer can be synthesized.”

Tony waved his hand impatiently. “Well, can it?”

“Most certainly, sir.”

“Neat,” Tony said. “Make a shopping list.” He looked at Strange with a taken-for-granted expression, as if revolutionizing biochemistry was what he did every day before breakfast. “There, the polymer’s sorted. Anything else you need?”

Tony gave a sideways glance to Bruce and asked dead level, as if Strange was not sitting a desk’s width away from them, “Go or no-go? Is the guy up for it, or do we check out LA?”

“Assuming his surgical skill is as good as he makes it out to be, I say he's a go.” Bruce felt reluctant in admitting so, but he was nothing if not honest. For all his glaringly negative personal qualities, Strange was their best bet if Cho wasn’t an option. Once the groundwork was laid, a lot of the success would hinge on the attachment procedure itself. If Tony opted for this approach, it would be a difficult surgery, very operator-dependent.

“My record speaks for itself,” Strange said. Clearly he wasn't happy about being spoken about like he wasn't in the room. He was even less happy about having his credentials questioned.

“I'll need to take a look at your radiographs and your medical records,” Strange told Tony. “Before I sign up to this, I want to make sure that there won’t be nasty surprises which might compromise the surgery. It would help if I could have a conversation with the physician who's been primarily in charge of your care.”

“That would be me,” Bruce piped up.

“And who exactly are you?” Strange looked, again, faintly annoyed at having to ask.

“I'm Bruce Banner.”

“I've only heard of a physicist by that name. Where do you practice?”

“Uh, that's me. The physicist. I... branched out.” Bruce straightened his back. He had nothing to be ashamed of regarding his medical credentials. Needs must when the devil drives, and all that. “I was working in India, before. As a GP. Now I'm employed at Stark Industries.”

Strange looked dismissive. “A GP in India. I can see why you wanted another consult, Mr Stark. May I see your records?”

“Actually, Dr Banner has been working in collaboration with me,” JARVIS annotated.

Tony leaned back to watch the blowout unfold. If he’d been bored with the medical to-and-fro so far, he seemed excited enough to watch JARVIS pick apart Strange.

“I have assimilated the entirety of the postgraduate medical courses from Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard into my working base of knowledge,” JARVIS said. “Before Dr Banner took up the task, I have been responsible for Mr Stark’s medical care, leading up to, and including the amputation procedure itself.”

Strange didn't look nearly as put in his place as Bruce hoped he would. It was evident what he thought about Tony’s decision to entrust himself to a quack from India and Siri’s older brother. JARVIS pulled up an extensive track record of Tony’s medical history, broaching other subjects briefly, like the small fact that Tony’s heart was powered by a miniaturized fusion reactor. He projected CT and MRI scans, Tony’s latest bloods, and a (sizable) list of the current medication protocols.

Strange scrutinized the radiographs and clinical photographs, small beady eyes blinking at the scans. “You have a lot of scar tissue from whatever you used to cauterize the wound. It's going to get in the way.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “I suppose that's what happens when you let an AI play doctor. Unless your JARVIS has hands that I don't know about? And this list of drugs is ridiculous. I'd ask what idiot put you on these, but it's fairly self-evident.”

Bruce shrugged it off. If he let himself get wound up over every barbed comment, his incident-free-days counter would end up with a sharp reset to zero. Tony was less fastidious with keeping his temper in check though. Digs at JARVIS seemed to be where he set an end point.

“Jarvis doesn’t have hands, no. If you must criticize the execution, look me in the eye and tell me how much better you would have done, but continue bad-mouthing my people, and I’ll find someone else who wants the job. Someone who can adapt to basic social etiquette. You’re the best?” Tony hissed. “Act the part.”

With a flick of his wrist he collapsed the holographic screen and pocketed the tablet, a wordless prompt for Bruce to follow suit. Strange looked, for the first time, genuinely unsettled. Because swinging his dick in Tony Stark's face was ever going to end with hugs and handshakes. Bruce decided to make one last attempt to salvage this meeting and get things back on track.

“The scar tissue. How much of an issue are we talking?”

“Preliminary surgeries to debulk some of it may be needed, maybe autologous skin grafting. Everything needs to fit together smoothly. I know an excellent plastic surgeon who can assist me.”

“What about Helen Cho's work? Instead of a graft?” If nothing else, bringing her in would mean that there was at least one person who seemed bearable to work with.

“I'd have to see it first. I'm already taking a professional risk working on this. Bringing in another experimental treatment on top of everything else is a gamble. I won't commit either way until I have more information.” He turned to Tony, his tone slightly less barbed. “You need to wean off some of those drugs. No smoking and drinking either. Everything has to be in the best condition possible.”

Tony was still riled. “Jarvis will send you a copy of all the data you need to make up your mind. In case it’s a yes, I expect nothing less than collegiate eye-to-eye from here on out. Any necessary preparations will be done in accord with Dr Banner and Jarvis. This is a team effort, not a dictatorship. If the answer is no, an informal notification will suffice.”

Tony stood up. His chair creaked across Strange’s expensive parquet.

“You’ll excuse us. Lunch. Maybe to a fruitful collaboration. And go give Return of the Jedi a try when you tire of the mirror. It’s a classic.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to 'Until Human Voices Wake Us', brought to you by Chaed and spacelaska. It's an Avengers AU with a difference: this story plays out over weekly fic updates, pictures, audio, video, puzzles, interactive mini games and a plot that takes you from the wormhole above Manhattan to a certain Siberian bunker. 
> 
> The premise? Tony never falls back through the New York wormhole and is instead rescued years later from a Chitauri spaceship... just maybe not exactly the way Christine Everhart was reporting. You might notice this is the second part of a series. We encourage new readers to stick with Voices. Catching up on the first story, aka Tony's rescue, is not mandatory. You'll pick up the gist if you want to read this as a standalone, and we've got you covered with enough Easter Eggs and BTS content to keep you in the loop. But if you're intrigued, by all means -- click [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12854667/chapters/29355825). It's not for the faint hearted.
> 
> Follow us on our [tumblr](http://spacewhalesrock.tumblr.com) for news and sneak peeks.
> 
> Comments are basically oxygen for us, so it would be really awesome if you could take a sec and drop us a line.


	2. Chapter 2

Siberia was not how Steve Rogers had pictured it would be. Sitting in a Shokoladnitsa, apparently Russia's overpriced answer to Starbucks but with better cakes, he thanked God for air conditioning. The sweat cooled on his forehead. An Iced Chai Latte quenched his raging thirst. Outside, the sweltering summer heat turned the streets into a live oven.

The city of Novosibirsk was a far cry from the frozen tundra of his imagination, a bustling city where post-industrialism and shopping malls co-existed with domed cathedrals, sculpted parks, and remnants of Soviet-era architecture. He was surprised how much he liked it, although perhaps that was just relief at finding out that the heart of Siberia was less of a savage wasteland, and more like Russia's version of Chicago. 

Steve had gone into the ice with Russia still an ally, and he’d woken up to find that he'd missed out on the Cold War. While he was up to date on the particulars, he didn't have the same ingrained wariness, the lived experience of paranoia which had been instilled in many of his fellow countrymen.

If not for his particular reason for traveling, Steve might have genuinely enjoyed the visit. 

As it was, he sat in the Shokoladnitsa with apprehension clawing at his gut. James Buchanan Barnes was an empty casket in Arlington National Cemetery. His body had never been found after his lethal fall off that train in ‘45. There had been no doubt about his fate, even back in the day. Steve’s childhood best friend, his comrade in arms, had died before his very own eyes.

So how the Hell was there CCTV footage of James Barnes during an arson attack in Belfast in 1989? How was his photograph attached to redacted Russian medical records from 1962? How was he caught in the background on Latvian state television in 2003, posing as a security guard moments before an opposition leader was assassinated at a political rally?

Steve’s first brush with this ghost from the past had been a tip from Natasha in early 2014, after she’d surfaced from a year-long hooky, no doubt a SHIELD vetted cloak-and-dagger op that Steve had no chance of ever cracking the books on. Natasha’s lips, as always, had been sealed on the matter. Well, almost. Apart, maybe, from that whispered place and date in Steve’s ear which neither of them had ever talked about again, but which had gnawed at him until he’d finally looked into it.

That was how he’d unearthed the Belfast footage. From there on out it had been a rabbit hole that Steve had eagerly plunged himself into. After six months of following his dead childhood friend through world history, he’d ended up banging on Director Fury’s door. It had been the single biggest relief of his life — and the greatest feeling of horror — when Fury reluctantly told him what they knew about the Zimniy Soldat project. 

Zimniy Soldat, or the Winter Soldier, was widely considered to be a myth. But for an organization that dealt in myths every day, it was par for the course. Nothing was confirmed, a handful of scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that SHIELD were only beginning to put together. A snapshot here, a witness account there, the odd word let slip in interrogations, fragments of intercepted communications during the Cold War. The entire dossier that Fury had was less than a hundred pages long. Most of it read like the ravings of a lunatic conspiracy theorist rather than the official files of a government agency.

But it was enough to go on, a starting point for an investigation. Steve, as was his nature, immediately volunteered. If there was hope, however small, he owed it to Bucky to pick up the trail.

Unfortunately, Director Fury thought otherwise. He wasn’t willing to let Steve off the leash to investigate anything. It wasn’t a priority, not during such a present time of conflict. They’d just pulled through a major war, rebuilding efforts had barely started, and nobody fooled themselves that the Chitauri wouldn’t return for revenge at one point, be it tomorrow or a century in the future. And if not them, others would come. The world had to prepare for intergalactic warfare. Steve Rogers’ school reunion wasn’t even bottom on the list of things that SHIELD cared about. 

If he really wanted to help, Fury had said, he better check in with Maria Hill in the front office. SHIELD’s public relations department needed Captain America to boost the agency’s reputation after sympathies had dropped to an all time low in the wake of Loki’s execution. 

Maybe they shouldn’t have broadcasted it on international television, was what Steve thought, but he’d been raised better than to open his mouth when he rather shouldn’t. So he’d checked in with Maria Hill in the front office and smiled widely into camera lenses. Pity that Captain America’s popularity index was almost as low as SHIELDs.

Zimniy Soldat continued to eat at Steve from the inside. How was it possible that a soldier of the 107th Infantry Regiment from the Second World War cropped up over and over at sites of international incidents? How could it be that this American soldier, in the glimpses and glances he caught of him, looked not a day older than Steve remembered?

Steve himself had gone through a number of medical tests, both before and after his time in an eight foot tall block of ice, and he’d been told repeatedly that the serum coursing through his veins made him very hard to kill, but not immortal. He’d spied a white hair or two in his mirror image these days, and, although that was pretty good for his ninety-ninth birthday on the line, that didn’t explain Bucky eschewing nearly a century of corpse-rot.

That alone should have merited all hands on deck to get to the bottom of it. Steve had told Fury as much on the many subsequent meetings, but Fury kept brushing him off. There were people working on it in the background. It just wasn’t a priority.

Steve stepped away dismissed, but could not dismiss it. He began spending hours online, getting to grips with the Internet, first at the Brooklyn Public Library and later on his own computer, which Natasha helped acquire and set up for him.

Steve fell into the online trap of eagerly devouring conspiracies and taking what he read with alarming good faith. Then he realized that the Internet was a place where anyone could write anything without any consequences and his élan eased up. He made a list of every major international incident he could find from the last seven decades and started trawling through the details of each. It was absurdly long and exhaustive and it turned into an obsession and it was destroying him.

He showed up at Natasha’s at five in the morning one day, jacked on caffeine and sleep deprivation, pounding on her door until the wood splintered. She had answers (she always did) and he wouldn’t relent until he had them too. Natasha, out of town during Steve’s loss of control, was quite surprised to find her apartment door broken down and her flat ransacked when she returned from a mission with Barton two days later. Steve was too ashamed to confess involvement in the crime. But she probably figured that out too. There was little in this world Natasha Romanoff didn’t seem to know about. 

Steve picked up the habit of running circuits in the middle of the night, trying (unsuccessfully) to tire himself out by sprinting marathons through parks. He mulled over the Zimniy Soldat dossier which he’d now learned by heart. He found himself wishing he could talk to someone like Peggy Carter or Howard, who would have more of an idea on how to tackle this. Steve knew that he was going about it all wrong, that he was limited by his own shaky grasp of today’s technology, and that he ultimately was what he’d always been: a soldier, not a detective. 

Then Bruce Banner turned up with the news of that cursed distress call, and Fury decided to send Steve into space, of all places, to find Tony Stark, of all people.

And Steve had dug his heels in.

He’d snapped that day, decided that SHIELD didn’t get to decide what was and wasn’t a priority. He couldn’t care less about Fury’s admonitions that they needed Captain America to lead a team onto the moon, only because Tony Stark had picked the wrong moment to be a hero, and ended up on the off-side of a wormhole bound for nowhere.

There was no way that Tony was still alive, four years on, and Steve took it as a personal insult that Fury deemed it more important to put all of their resources into a Hail Mary mission to bring home an urn full of space crud instead of letting him uncover the mystery that was Bucky Barnes. What were they going to do, manhandle him onto a spacecraft? 

Turned out that Fury could change his priorities when it suited him, very quickly even.

“Take this mission, Cap,” Fury had said during a four-eyes brief, “and we’ll send you on your way, complete with the newest intel on your best buddy. It’s as fresh as from six months ago.”

If he refused, well, SHIELD could easily pick someone else to bring in Zimniy Soldat, and that someone might be less inclined to take him alive, if Steve got the drift.

He wasn't sure now if he regretted taking the bait or not. He regretted everything that had happened after, bitterly, although some of the details were hazy. He remembered being very, very angry, until he suddenly hadn’t been, but at that point it had been far too late.

Steve still dreamed about the snap under his fingers. Sometimes that horrified him, the sound of it, and the feel of cracking a twig, the pop the bones had made. Sometimes it still felt just a little bit satisfying. The SHIELD therapist said that he shouldn't put too much stock in dreams. He'd been cleared for active duty, certified sane and good to go despite his conduct in the field. Extenuating circumstances. Everything could be explained away if the authorities wanted to. Both Steve and Tony got to live that, albeit on opposing ends of the spectrum.

Fury, at least, had been as good as his word.

Steve took up pursuit of Bucky’s cold trail as soon as he was discharged. He went from city to city and country to country, seeking out eyewitnesses, breaking into archives to steal paper records, arriving at abandoned facilities only to find them cleared out and replaced by cobwebs.

After months on the road he caught a plane back to the States, partly because his leave arrangement involved him checking in with Fury on a regular basis, and partly because he needed to get back to Brooklyn, to clear his head and run around parks some more to mull it all over.

Instead he was dragged out to see Tony Stark on some private island somewhere. Steve had not understood Fury’s intentions, unless they were to add fuel to a fire that was still burning hot. Despite not having seen Tony for over half a year, the visit shook Steve up more than he liked to admit, and it wasn’t solely because on his way out Tony had put a hand on his shoulder and told him he wouldn’t ever forget who was responsible for James Rhodes’ death.

It was hard to look at someone who so openly hated him, to see flashes of Howard in that deeply troubled expression. It was harder still not to hate Tony back for not being his father. 

While Tony went on to embark on his public comeback campaign, Steve set out on the road again, chasing bust leads and tossing a coin to guess whether his latest contacts would turn out to be genuinely useful or unhinged conspiracy nuts.

The bell above the door of the Shokoladnitsa rang once, and a nondescript middle aged man, unshaved and with a slight beer belly, sat down opposite of him. They both stared out of the window into Gogolya Street.

Then a battered brown folder slid into his lap and the man took his leave.

* * *

Siberia was another bust. 

Steve’s game of connect-the-dots had taken him all the way from the US to Western Europe to the far reaches of Russia, and still he had no more to show for it than a tour of several abandoned facilities, with the one in Kosvinsky Mountain Range being the latest and most remote.

Steve had felt a surge of hope when he’d found the place, a two-day offroad hike to a bunker nestled into overgrown countryside. But the place was cleared out, just some old computer terminal that wouldn't turn on. He tried everything from gentleness to brute force (he’d pulled it out of the wall in the end), because what else would a computer do there than provide the one missing clue he was in need of?

He’d spent the night on the dusty concrete floor, as though he could absorb the secrets of the place through the cold cemented ground. By dawn nothing had changed, safe for a crook in his neck. It was time to go home. Steve traveled to Krasnoyarsk with the intention of catching the Trans-Sib back to Moscow. He could sit in peace and watch the countryside roll past, obsess over his non-findings while the train rolled across the tundra. He was two places away in line at the ticket kiosk when his cell phone rang. A text message from Maria Hill.

_rhodes funeral 5d from now_

Attached was an address: _Arlington, VA 22211_

Steve pocketed the phone, walked out of the station, and hailed a cab to the airport.

* * *

Six layovers later Steve sat in his Brooklyn apartment, suitcase unpacked, his clothes still grubby with the dirt of the Chornaya Sopka. He’d just finished flipping through the television channels — which Tony and his SI posse seemed to dominate in one way or another — when there was a heavy-fisted bang on his door.

Steve got up and squinted through the peephole. Two mountainous, broad shouldered men loitered in the hallway. They didn't look friendly. 

His heart skipped a beat. Not from fear — he could take them, easily — but from hope that he'd been close enough to something to ruffle the feathers of who or what might be behind the mystery of the Winter Soldier. Eagerly, Steve opened the door, hoping that his neighbors were out for the night (the blonde eyeful down the hall was a late night owl), and that he’d be able to pull some clue from his soon-to-be-unconscious uninvited guests.

“Steve Rogers?” 

The one on the right was balding. They both wore sunglasses indoors. For anyone not super serum enhanced they would be plenty intimidating.

“Can I help you, gentlemen?”

He may as well be cordial, he decided, up until the first punch was thrown. Good manners cost nothing. 

“Word is you came back to town for James Rhodes' funeral,” Not-Balding said flatly. 

Of all the things Steve had expected, it certainly wasn't that. “Is that so?” he said, eyeing them both with perplexed wariness. “I can't see how it would be anyone's business, either way.” 

“I think you can.” Balding said in the same intonation as his partner, a sort of half-bored, half-threatening monotone. Steve narrowed his eyes. He wasn't sure if these were hired suits, hired thugs, or some really out of the ordinary newspaper hacks. 

“No, I really can't,” he persisted. “Now if you'll excuse me. It’s late in the evening.”

He closed the door. Not-Balding shoved his foot into the doorstep. Steve gave them both a bemused look. It wouldn’t cost him a sweat to slam the door so hard as to crush Not-Balding’s foot right where he’d shoved it.

“Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Stay away from that funeral. You're not welcome.” The foot withdrew. Balding shut the door. Steve watched them leave through the peephole.

He stood in the hallway of his apartment in puzzled silence before he was able to put two and two together. Then he barked out a short, mirthless laugh. He hadn’t just been blustered by the keepers of Zimniy Soldat.

These had been Tony’s men.

Steve was surprised that he’d sent thugs and not lawyers, but he supposed that legal action wouldn’t fit with the story Tony sold to the press: that Captain America was a close family friend. Steve had caught wind of the final draft of the SI patented storyline before he’d boarded the plane to Russia, and he’d shallowly followed subtitled television news whenever he’d had the chance. Tony Stark had been a showman before his soiree through the wormhole, and apparently he was on the right medication to take this occupation back up. The public were eating it out of his hands, anyway. Hand. Whatever.

But if Tony was sending hired goons to his doorstep, then that could only mean one thing: he was scared. Steve didn’t know how to feel about that — ashamed maybe, even though there was that lingering feeling of satisfaction from putting Tony in his place, even though he kept telling himself that was the memory of the poison talking. But what he knew was that not even a Stark-scale temper tantrum would be enough to keep him from James Rhodes’ funeral. They’d fought side by side during the war, and Rhodes had committed the ultimate sacrifice to save Steve’s life, straight up and without hesitation. Come hell or high water, Steve was going to pay his last respects. And seeing Tony in person with enough distance between the Chitauri ship and now might just be a chance to smooth things over. It wasn’t as if either of them lived up to the lies Tony dished out in his press appearances. There weren’t any poker nights, or Taco Tuesdays, or football get-togethers.

The last time they’d been teamed up Tony had been a space junkie and Steve had just had a whopper dose of alien-spider hallucinogenic venom. They’d hit it out like frenzied dogs, exchanging blows until they’d both been within an inch of their lives. If Steve was willing to forgive the broken jaw, maybe Tony could forgive the broken arm. Maybe they could shake on it like men and draw a line under it all.

Or, as Bucky used to say back in the day, ‘ _If pigs had wings, Stevie,_ _then bacon would surely fly.’_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you manage to stay on top of reddit all day? Fear not, we took a screenshot for you.
> 
>   
> 
> 
> Thanks all for all the comments so far. <3  
> We breathe feedback, so give it to us! 


	3. Chapter 3

She smoothed out an imaginary wrinkle on the pencil skirt of her black dress, and glanced out of the window as the city bustle opened up into open road. The cemetery was only a short drive, but she found herself wishing it were longer. She could use the time to prepare, to collect herself. To put off the inevitable.

Tony sat beside her in a suit which had been the seventh one he'd tried on that morning. Choosing a tie had been equally fraught. She supposed he wasn't ready either. Nobody was ever ready to bury their best friend.

There was no body. SHIELD had put it as tactfully as possible, but Tony had been more blunt. Whatever had been up there hadn't made provisions for leftovers. They'd found half a finger. That had been it.  She wondered if there was a casket waiting for them to bury with half a finger in it. Probably not. Jim Rhodes’ remaining body parts were most likely stored in a SHIELD facility somewhere, poked and prodded at for debatable scientific incentive.

Bruce would meet them at the service. Pepper was grateful that he hadn't tagged along for the ride. He was generally good about being unobtrusive, although he'd been bordering on distant lately. Tony's long and brutal road to recovery had taken a heavy toll on all of them, in different ways.

She leaned over and squeezed Tony's hand. The car pulled into Arlington National driveway and Pepper felt Tony mold back into his seat as though he could somehow vanish into the leather upholstery. Arlington was a military cemetery, rows upon rows of selfsame white tombstone markers divided by patches of neatly trimmed instant lawn. The ceremony itself was limited to a small group of relatives and befriended army personnel, with Jim’s parents standing to the side accepting condolences. Pepper caught his mother's eye as they filed past, and saw a hollow, disbelieving mask. Grief made burnt-out shells of everyone.

It reminded her of Tony's funeral. The empty coffin, the sound of her own blood rushing in her ears, drowning out the organ. The pressure to keep it all together when a part of her just wanted to buckle to her knees and scream because she couldn’t accept that it was happening, yet still having to keep walking towards the grave site, one foot in front of the other.

Back then it had been Jim who'd propelled an arm under hers, urging her forward and supporting her so that she wouldn't collapse. She’d watched the footage back later. She'd looked so much more composed than she’d felt, but Jim had understood, had seen that waver where nobody else had. He'd buried a lot of people.

She waited for Tony to shake Jim’s parents hands, overhearing him offering his aid if they needed anything, and Jim’s father thanking him curtly, saying they didn’t. Unless Tony found a way to bring back their only son, there was nothing they’d need of him.

The casket itself was draped in the state flag. There were guards of honor and salutes, and a shooting volley waiting to be fired. At least they hadn't pushed the issue of Tony being a coffin bearer. That honor had fallen to Jim’s military colleagues.

Suddenly Tony clutched her hand. His palm was clammy around hers. She cast a glance at him. There was a thin sheen on his forehead. She mouthed an ‘Are you okay?’ and caught the hint of a head shake.

Pepper wasn't so worried, for once, about the public image factor. This was a small, private service, which had been kept quiet from the media. The people here wouldn’t sell Tony out if they saw him lose his bearings. But she knew how important it would be to him to do Jim proud, to see him off on his final journey. She knew he wouldn't want to look back on today and feel ashamed of how he'd coped, even if not coping was a perfectly understandable response.

So when he asked her if they could leave, she slipped one arm through his, shook her head tightly and carried on walking with him to the plot of land outside where a hole was waiting for them to bury a beautiful wooden casket full of nothing.

Jim’s colleagues folded the flag, with three empty shell casings laid inside. It would be the only inheritance passed down to his parents, save maybe for the framed picture of their decorated son. There was no speech on request of Jim’s mother. Tony had sagged in relief when Pepper had told him a week ago; he’d stewed over what to say for weeks on end, finding only wronger words. The fact that Jim had talked at Tony’s funeral, a short and sublime eulogy, had only put more pressure on Tony to do his best friend justice.

To her knowledge Tony had only ever been to one other funeral that had taxed him as much as this one did. The name on that headstone hadn’t been LTC JAMES R RHODES but IN LOVING MEMORY OF MARIA AND HOWARD STARK. No, actually, that was only a half-truth. There had been another funeral. One that she’d attended together with Tony no less. Obadiah Stane’s, who’d tried to kill Tony, but had died himself in the attempt. Obadiah Stane, who was now lying in his very own six-foot hole down in San Antonio, Texas, where the grit was coarse and the instant lawn didn’t thrive. The fine print of Stane’s death had never trickled through to the wider public, necessitating Tony’s presence at the burial site after his mentor’s sudden demise. She tried to remember what Stane’s epitaph said, if it said anything at all. Good Night And God Bless maybe, or Here Lies The Devil.

Ahead of her Tony picked up a handful of dirt and threw it. It fell on the poplar of Jim’s casket and looked like spilled coffee grounds. She gently nudged Tony on, who stared at the hole as though trapped by a spell; he was holding back the procession. The rest was a blur, with many unwelcome parallels to Tony’s own funeral. Tony himself kept fidgeting and tweaking his tie, and his attention was drawn to everything but the service. He cast sporadic glances down the hill where Happy waited with the car.

Then something else caught his eye, and that settled it for his composure.

Pepper looked concernedly up at him, then followed his line of vision. Steve Rogers had walked up the hill, slick and groomed, although he hadn’t shaved back that atrocious beard. Before she had the chance to talk Tony out of whatever bad idea he had in mind, he gave her a squeeze, told her he’d be right back, and why didn’t she go tell Happy to start up the A/C already? She watched him walk off like an impetuous child in junior high.

“Is he okay?”

Bruce appeared at her side out of nowhere, having so far done a tasteful job at blending in with the scenery. He’d conjured up freshly ironed clothes for the occasion, but it did little to hide the notion that he he must have forgotten what a bed looked like. Bruce had never had a sunny disposition, but whatever was going on with him right now went beyond that. 

“No,” she said honestly, watching as the two silhouettes met on the hilltop.

“That doesn't seem good.”

Bruce twitched a nod in the direction of Tony and Steve. At least Tony had the good sense to hide his animosity behind pretend camaraderie for the benefit of anyone watching. She could see the way his arm bent around Steve's shoulder though, as if he was tempted to strangle him.

“As long as he holds it together,” she said. “That's the main thing.”

Part of her was worried that Steve would wind him up, say the wrong thing and trigger a scene. So far, at least to an outside observer, the whole exchange looked friendly and civil. She could only imagine what was actually being said.

When Tony reappeared, it was with a face like thunder. She didn't appreciate the proprietary hand he slipped around her waist. One time she might have found it appealing, but knowing that it came from a place of Tony's deep, bubbling insecurities made it somehow unattractive. Still, he needed her right now, so she leaned into his attempt at an embrace and patted his arm.

“I’ll go check in with Hap,” said Tony distractedly, disentangling himself before storming down the hill towards the car. Bruce gave her a sympathetic look as they called their goodbyes. Pepper gritted her teeth.

She was fed up of sympathy.

* * *

The drive back to the hotel was wordless and tense. She'd put a hand on Tony’s knee, and he'd stared straight out of the window, and that had been that. They rode the private elevator to the penthouse suite in silence.

It surprised her then when Tony turned to her and asked, with a small smile that was almost sheepish, if she wanted to get room service. What followed was a relief from a tension she hadn't realized she'd been holding. That, in a worst case scenario, they would check in and Tony would stay sullen and uncommunicative, maybe tank a bottle of something and end up either passed out and puking, or drunkenly belligerent. Or that, more likely, she would spend the whole evening overcompensating, trying to cajole and remind him that there were still people in the here and now who loved him, that life was for the living, and all the while he'd press his mouth together and shrug her off, or maybe bite back with some vicious sarcasm.

This was much, much better than everything she'd been dreading.

“You think you could eat?” she asked. “Because I think I could eat.”

He ordered for both of them while she changed out of her black clothes. He shrugged off his own suit, the phone cradled between his shoulder and ear as he picked from the menu. He rubbed at the reactor glowing through his undershirt. Pepper mouthed ‘chocolate’, and Tony gave her a thumbs-up, telling the clerk to bring mousse for dessert. Then he put down the receiver and they both let out a long breath. It was as though just by discarding their funeral clothes the air felt a tiny bit lighter.

Hotel staff arrived soon after. Tony directed them to the balcony where they busied themselves with a foldaway stand, hot plates and cutlery. They vanished quickly and unobtrusively, leaving a table for two, complete with pressed linen and plates bearing tender cuts of filet mignon served with something or other decoratively arranged on the side. No wine.

Tony pulled out the chair for her. The way the meal was laid out had an invisible effect on both of them; it was a civilizing anchor, a ritual to go through when they were at a loss for what to do with themselves. Pepper picked up her knife and fork. Tony picked up his fork. His food was already cut into bite-sized pieces. It spoke volumes about the service of the best hotel in town.

One of the things that she'd forgotten she had missed about her time with Tony was his appreciation for good food. After he'd gone, she'd lost an alarming amount of weight from either forgetting to eat, or eating on the go. Even once she'd regained a shaky equilibrium to life, she had never taken the time to indulge much in fine dining. With food, as with much everything else, Tony was the one who appreciated the finer things in life. And if an outsider might call it extravagant, Pepper knew that his more refined tastes were a product of a voracious appetite for the best of life, married with his mother's militant insistence on the old money concept of good breeding. So if there was one thing that was strangely reassuring, which felt more like then than now, it was seeing the fruits of a typical Tony-splurge laid out in front of them.

Pepper ate slowly, savoring appreciatively. Maybe it should have felt inappropriate, to have such a beautiful meal when they'd just buried Jim. But today was no different from the other days that he'd already been dead. Today was a milestone only for his family's sake, so they could attempt a closure that would never really come. It didn't change what had been Tony’s and Pepper’s reality for months.

She told herself that this was what Jim would have wanted. If he'd been here to comment, she felt fairly confident at guessing what he would have said. That they should keep going, that they needed to hold on to what they had together, and that he wouldn't want anyone climbing into the grave with him.

“Do you remember...?” she asked, pausing as the recollection hit her. “The time when you and Jim took that boat out, the one that you got at that auction? You told him it was sea-worthy, even though it clearly belonged on the trash dump, but you were just impatient to go sailing. And the whole thing ended up with you both being towed home by the coast guard.”

Tony laughed around a mouthful of steak. “He was really close to push me over the railing.”

Jim had also caught a cold as reward for his camaraderie. Tony had ordered Pepper, still his PA at the time, to send him a conciliatory box of tissues. They’d buried the hatchet a week later, with Jim rid of the sniffles and helping Tony fix up the boat’s engine.

“He was one of the good guys,” Tony said. “Got me out of a lot of trouble. Got me into some too.”

In the early days of Tony’s return Pepper had felt almost as though there had been a bizarre trade. James Rhodes had gone up into the dark, and Tony Stark had come back in his stead. It was ridiculous, of course, with Jim’s death nothing but a tragedy of a mission gone wrong. But that feeling had crept back in today, especially on seeing Jim's mother and the silent question hanging dead in the air whenever she’d looked at Tony.  _ Why are you here, and my boy is gone? _

They finished their steaks and found their deserts in a small cool box by the table. Pepper was already full, but kept eating anyway, slow bites as they breathed in the night air, and listened to the sounds of the world going about its business below. She even let Tony spoon-feed her, although she rolled her eyes and laughed as he did, and it was only a little bit forced. They left the table in disarray, the remnants of a good meal. Someone would clear it up, the same staff who’d set it out in the first place.

When they kissed, it tasted like rosemary and chocolate mousse. Tony led her inside and propagated the jacuzzi. He didn’t want to retire for the night right away, and she realized that neither did she.

Pepper pulled the bobby pins out of her hair and stepped out of her underwear, perching on the edge of the tub while the water rose. She smiled at Tony. They lay side by side in the water. Tony had dumped far too much hotel shower gel in; bubbles overwhelmed the tub. He rested his chin in the crook of her neck, his beard scratching her skin.

“Thank you,” Tony said. “For making me stay back there. It would have been wrong, leaving.”

The perfumed water was slipped and smooth between them, enveloping them both in warmth. She kissed his temple. “I know. It's okay. I get it. At your funeral I'd have bolted if it hadn't been for Jim. And the hundreds of cameras on me.”

“I can sure skip on graveyards for a while,” said Tony. Before all of this he'd barely managed the once-a-year visit for his parents. Something told her that he wouldn’t muster up the commitment to visit Jim any more often. But that was all right too. You didn't need to stare at a hole in the ground to remember someone.

She cupped some water in her hand and let it run over his shoulder. If he didn’t look good, he certainly looked a lot better than last year, when he’d been that fragile, corpse-like thing on the island. The scars from his rib surgery were faint now, almost imperceptible pale lines. He was sticking to his physical therapy, and although he was still a little softer around the edges, she knew there was muscle thriving underneath. If Jim could see him now, if someone could ask him if it had been worth it, he probably would say yes. Jim Rhodes had been that sort of friend.

She felt safe and comfortable, cocooned in his arms. It felt like things were supposed to feel like. Like they were equals again, partners. Two against the world, she thought.

Then Tony said, “Captain Patri-idiotic was there. I told him to get bent. He looks awful, don’t you think?”

She nodded, and told him what he wanted to hear. “He looks like he's been sleeping on a park bench.”

Pepper wondered what exactly Steve had been up to during his long time off the radar. She had her PR people keep track of him. If Captain America appeared in public, she wanted to know when and how and what he said, to be able to head anything off at the pass that might catch Tony off guard. She'd wanted to speak to Steve herself before the funeral, to reason with him over not coming, but Tony had insisted on handling it his own way. It obviously hadn't worked.

“Hopefully there weren't any long lenses today,” she said. The thought sickened her, that the paparazzi had gotten wind of Jim's funeral and preyed on it like vultures. “But you did good,” she continued. “You kept it together beautifully. Nobody looking at you would have guessed that you hate his guts.”

“I don’t hate his guts,” Tony negated. “We’re just not on the same wavelength.” He grimaced somewhat theatrically. “You know he's gay, right? I get the creeps when I look on the Internet. He might be packing fudge, but I'm not. When will people get that in their heads?”

Pepper raised an eyebrow in slight surprise. Of all the objections Tony had to Steve, she hadn't expected them to be rooted in his sexuality. Steve Rogers had had the worst possible coming out. Near the turn of the century, Peggy Carter, older and slightly disinhibited with the early onset of dementia, had sensationally revealed that, not only had she never been Cap's girlfriend, but that the star-spangled hero's homosexuality had been an open secret among those who knew him. People were delighted and appalled in equal measure, depending on which end of the political spectrum they placed themselves on. Poor Steve had woken up to a world where not only was nothing familiar, but in which he was also an unwilling gay icon.

One thing led to another, and it wasn’t long before the fanbase decrypted footage of Captain America and Iron Man working together in the early hours of the Chitauri war. The unanimous consensus read ‘sexual tension’. Follow that up with the public narrative of the space mission where Steve was the white knight to the rescue, and you had the Tumblr sphere in overdrive with speculation, manipulated images and genuinely awful fiction, with entire communities springing up around the 'ship'.

Pepper wasn't shocked that Tony had seen it. Stony was a prominent little corner of the online world. She was just slightly surprised that he had taken such umbrage to the idea. If nothing else, she would have thought that he might find it amusing.

“It's just teenage girls fantasizing about two hot guys. Be flattered. You've really made it when you get homoerotic fiction written about you.”

“The only thing Steve deserves getting stuffed up his ass is the goddamn American flag,” said Tony, deadpan.

“Tony!” She covered her open mouth with her hand. 

“What? He’d probably even like that.”

She put a finger to his lips. “Can you forget about Steve for a minute?”

Beneath her touch, the edges of Tony’s mouth quirked upwards. He planted a soft kiss against the tip of her forefinger.

“I can do one minute,” he assured her, sinking deeper into the water, pulling her with him. “How am I doing? Are you counting down yet?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bet you guys wonder about the Stony tag in this series. Patience. 
> 
> In the meantime, a minute of silence for Mama Rhodes and her beloved son.
> 
>   
> 


	4. Chapter 4

Steve had been to many funerals. Most of them blurred together. The services, the coffins and the flags, the final salute. They were part of an all too-familiar ritual, with the only variable changing being the bereaved families present. Today was not a blur. Today stood out in sharp, inarguable contrast. James Rhodes had died saving Steve’s life. Steve hadn't asked for it, hadn't wished it, and certainly hadn't deserved it. But that didn’t change the course of events. Tony might not want him there, but it went against every fiber of his being not to show up and pay his last respects.

All throughout the cab ride and the walk up to the burial site, Steve had told himself he’d stay away from Tony. Although it had been corny, he’d gotten the message: Back off. He’d taken a gamble by coming. It wasn’t necessary to rub more salt into a still festering wound. But all that willful intent had vaporized the moment he’d actually caught sight of Tony. He was holding on to Pepper’s arm, haunted, looking like his knees were about to buckle out from under him. Steve thought of a picture he’d seen of Howard Stark, a magazine photo clipped and pasted into an album by an elderly Peggy Carter. “He really got to the top of that ladder,” Peggy had said. “Don’t you think so, Stevie?”

Howard had been closing in on sixty in that picture. His son looked years older than that, standing at the final resting place of his friend. The friend Steve had, at least by proxy, put in the ground. He would never be able to right that particular wrong, but a relentless urge seized him to let Tony know that he was willing to attempt to. Steve could live with hostility on Tony’s part — they didn’t have to be the best friends they were sold as by the media — but hostility was one thing, and fear was another. He didn't want to be that one thing that deprived a man of his peace of mind.

After the service, he waited for the mourners to slowly file away from the graveside. Pepper’s strawberry blonde ponytail was a bright ribbon in a sea of sombre black. Steve trailed after them at a distance. He caught sight of Bruce, briefly, who hung back at the periphery. Their eyes locked. Bruce offered a half-smile, and Steve nodded by way of reply, then looked back towards where Tony was. From the corner of his eye, he thought he noticed Bruce shake his head. _Please, just don’t._ But Steve kept walking.

He hovered on the edges until, much to his surprise, it was Tony who came striding over. He had a cordial expression as he slung an arm around Steve’s shoulder, and he smelled like cologne and sobriety. But he clearly struggled to uphold the best pals narrative. His performance might have been friendly, but his words were anything but.

“You son of a bitch,” Tony hissed under his breath. “Why don’t you take your polished dress shoes and never set foot here again?”

“You know I had to come,” Steve whispered back. “You know I owe him that.”

“You want to own up? How about you stop getting everyone around you killed? Think you could manage that, Cap?” He spat Steve's nickname like it was poison.

“Tony, I wanted to—”

“Beat it.” Tony cut him off. “I'm not interested. Fuck PR. You come near me again, I'll file for a restraining order.”

“Wait.”

He grabbed Tony, unthinking, by the arm. A flash of panic crossed Tony’s face. Steve let go instantly. Tony opened his mouth as if to say something, but then he just shot around and stalked off at speed to where Pepper was anxiously craning her neck for his return. Minutes later their black sedan pulled away. Steve was left with nothing but a sinking feeling in the pit of his gut.

He made small talk with some of Rhodes’ colleagues afterwards, killing time. Captain America received a split reception these days; half the men treated him like an icon, while the other half didn’t bother to hide their contempt. He was a war hero who’d been crucial in defeating the Chitauri onslaught. But he was also the one who’d filled numerous graves here at Arlington, and many other cemeteries. It was survivor’s guilt of the worst kind: they resented him for making it, while their own friends and sons and brothers had not. It certainly didn’t help his public image that he had been made a poster boy for an organization with a very questionable resume.

Once the last of them left, Steve made his way to another part of the cemetery. It was a more familiar quadrant, one which housed much older graves. He came to stand in front of what was most certainly not the final resting place of James Buchanan Barnes, despite what it purported to be. Steve knelt down and brushed the brittle headstone clean.

How often had he come here since he’d woken from the ice? How many times had he poured his worries out to the memory of the man he’d thought was decades dead? Was Bucky really alive? Because if he was, by a twist of wild implausibility, then this memorial was a sham. There was no more point to Steve crouching in front of it than crouching in front of a boulder in a park somewhere.

“Where are you, Buck? What have you been up to while I took that nap?”

Howard Stark had offered Bucky a job once. Something solid to come back to once the war was over. They’d been playing cards in a ramshackle hut, a moment of respite from all the killing and dying. Stark Industries had been in its fledgling years, but the yearly accounts instilled a confidence in Howard which was only fueled by the drink he shared with Bucky. Steve abstained. Bourbon had made him hellish sick once before the serum, and he’d never been able to shake the memory.

“There’ll be enough contracts to keep me in business long after the war’s won,” Howard said. “And I need good men to do good business.”

“Only business I know is killing Krauts,” was Bucky’s answer. “Don’t think there’ll be much call for that in peacetime.”

Didn’t matter, said Howard, he’d find him something. Steve too, if he got sick of dancing for the cameras. Steve had politely declined. Bucky had simply shrugged. He’d tried later to talk about it with Bucky, but Bucky had only said he wouldn’t be taking no job with Howard’s company and that was that. And Steve had understood, on some level. Sometimes he felt the same. That right in the heat of the war was where they belonged, and nowhere else.

Of course, Steve’s anxiety over post-war employment had been pointless. No contingency plan could have predicted this particular fate. In another world, James Barnes and Steve Rogers would have walked through this cemetery side by side, old and infirm together, paying tribute to their fallen comrades. In another world, they would have lived to see some of the peacetime they’d fought so hard to obtain. In this world, Steve had woken to unrest and been pointed like a cannon straight into the next war. And Bucky?

Well, that remained to be determined.

* * *

Coming home wasn't complete without a summons from the boss himself. Steve wasn't stupid. Maria Hill hadn’t lured him back for the sole reason of attending James Rhodes’ service.

“It was a nice funeral,” said Director Fury, leaning back in his chair. They sat in his office in New York, which had always instilled a picture of 1930s cop movies in Steve. The only accessory missing was a cigar, although that might be because smoking was so deeply frowned upon in the twenty-first century. “Very tasteful.”

“Was that why you didn’t attend?”

Fury smirked. “I keep my eye on things, Captain.”

“You smuggled a camera in my tie pin?” Steve asked dryly.

“Not yours,” said Fury. “How’s your buddy Stark? You hung out I hear.”

“Ran into, more like. But I doubt that I’m his favorite buddy.”

“He’s certainly not mine right now,” said Fury. He narrowed his remaining eye. “I’ve got Starship Enterprise parked in my backyard, and the guy with the owner’s manual is refusing to talk to me except through an army of lawyers.”

“Weren’t you supposed to hand it over? After, what, half a year? I thought that was the deal.” Only he didn’t think so, he knew. He’d witnessed the handshake, the relief on Tony’s face, the smug look on Fury’s.

“I said what I had to say,” Fury retorted, “to stop Stark from shitting the bed all over national media. He told his story the way he wanted to. Now he’s harassing me with threats about going public — let him, I say! He’ll only discredit himself if he changes the narrative, and he knows it.”

“So you lied to him? On purpose?”

“When you put it like that,” Fury said and trailed off, demonstratively thoughtful. The following words were laced with enough sarcasm to make up for the mock contemplation. “Of course I lied to him. I’m not only allowed to lie, I’m expected to lie when national security is on the line. It says so on my goddamn payslip. We’re not living in an after school special, Cap.”

Steve pursed his lips. He couldn’t argue with national security, but he didn’t have to like how Fury went about it. Steve had been raised Christian. When he’d been a boy his mother had drilled the Ten Commandments into his head every night before tucking him into bed. Though shalt not lie, my darling boy.

He couldn’t help but ask, “And what if Tony’s lawyers win?”

Part of him hoped for it, if only to see Fury sizzle. But he also knew that this kind of thing wasn’t a matter resolvable over a week. It was a courtroom match that could stretch over years, and the only thing Fury had to succeed at stretching was Tony’s cracking composure — and then wait for him to blow it.

“Many roads lead to Rome,” Fury said. _But not everyone's bound to get there_ , was the underlying implication.

Steve made to stand. “Anything else you need of me, sir?” He doubted he’d been pulled into Fury’s office for tea and scones.

“Yes. In fact, there is. You’re to report to Hangar 421C at 0800 tomorrow. A walk down memory lane, if you will. Just because Stark won’t play along doesn’t mean you don’t have to.”

“Sir?” said Steve. “I put everything I know in my report. I don’t see the sense in me goi—”

Fury held up a hand. “You’re not paid to see sense, Cap. Tomorrow, 0800 sharp. Take it as a chance to face your demons.”

* * *

He sat in his boxers on the couch, shoveling cereal into his mouth — his third bowl which, along with the four eggs (over easy) he’d just wolfed, amounted to a standard Captain America breakfast. In the background the BBC 24/7 news service droned on on TV. Steve had taken to keeping it turned on from the moment he woke to the one he went to sleep, mostly in hopes of catching a glimpse of Bucky in the midst of the next big international incident waiting to happen.

The one bed apartment he’d rented was tiny, spartan. He kept it in perfect order, the way it had been drilled into him by the army. He remembered when Colonel Phillips would pace the recruit barracks at Camp Leileigh, his eyes bulging as he inspected every bunk. The uniforms had to sit right, the boots be shined to perfection. Clothes were neatly folded in the lockers, but the moment of truth would always be when the Colonel pulled a quarter from his pocket and bounced it off the beds to see how tightly they were made. If it didn’t bounce, you had to get down on the floor and churn out fifty push-ups. Steve had always been meticulous about pulling his sheets tight, not least because in his pre-serum days, stuck in a ninety-pound asthmatic body, fifty push-ups had been a physical impossibility. He barely broke a sweat at two-hundred nowadays, but he still made sure to make his bed the right way. The quarter always bounced.

It was an unpleasant surprise to see how little he had left over at the end of the month from renting in Brooklyn, even on a salary like that from SHIELD. The location wasn’t even convenient. They’d torn down the little independent cinema he used to catch flicks for thirty-five cents a piece. The greengrocer’s next door was now a bar that served drinks in mason jars, and the building complex his mother used to have a flat in had been replaced with a Macy’s.

Natasha once suggested that he move somewhere else entirely, cut what threads kept him rooted to the past. When he said he couldn’t imagine living anywhere but Brooklyn, she’d teased him and said that he sounded like someone’s grumpy grandpa. People used the grandpa joke a lot. Steve had learned to laugh along on most occasions, but it never sat right with him. He’d been just shy of his twenty-seventh birthday when he’d crashed the bomber. For all everyone kept making comments about him being an old man, he hadn’t been a day older when they’d pulled him from the ice. Just because his drivers license read 1918 didn’t mean he shared the experiences of a centenarian. Fate had hit the pause button on Steve’s life. From his point of view he wasn’t an antique, but a time traveler.

He was thirty-two now, not ninety-eight, but that didn’t stop people from expecting him to have all the wisdom of the seventy years he’d skipped out on. Heck, he’d missed the Beatles, and Vietnam, and the fall of the Berlin wall. All of that was as alien to him as the smartphone in his pocket.

One of the weirdest revelations had certainly been seeing his ‘little secret’ become not just public knowledge, but a true cause célèbre. Apart from being flooded with shame at first, Steve wanted his private life to remain what it was — private. And that clearly didn’t involve becoming an ambassador celebrating the tail end of a civil rights movement he’d missed out on. Nowadays they had a term for his kind of thinking: internalized homophobia. Not to worry, Steve had been told, his condition could be easily mitigated with education, life experience, and therapy, especially when being led by gay-friendly shrinks. Steve didn't think he was phobic of anything. Back in the day he had to keep it quiet because nobody would have been too pleased over finding out that Captain America was a fairy. Nowadays Steve just didn’t see how it was anyone’s business.

He got dressed and drove his Harley out to meet Maria Hill at 0800 sharp.

* * *

Stepping foot back on the ship didn’t turn out to be the nightmare experience he’d expected it to be. It smelled of bleach now, not of putrid rot. Fluorescent tubes were attached to the ceiling in twenty feet intervals. No nook or cranny was left unlit. The oppressive atmosphere, the stale air, it was all gone. In a way, this realization helped. It demystified the place for him, allowed him to see if for what it really was. Not the looming maze of dark, bloodstained corridors he'd been dreaming about, but simply another military vessel.

He accompanied Hill into a large room full of screens and computers and blinking equipment. A team of twenty hustled like bees in a hive between the monitors. Hill led him to one of the workstations, where an older woman frowned at data. Introductions yielded that she was in charge of the project, but she failed to give her name. Steve was pretty sure he didn’t need to give his either. They shook hands, then Hill cleared her throat. She pointed to the screen.

“Does anything look familiar?”

Steve peered at the gibberish lines, half-English, the rest odd symbols. Some he recognized from the ship, but could not pinpoint their origin.

“Is there anything at all that Stark said or did that might pertain to the control systems? To the JARVIS software?” asked the scientist. “Have you seen him input any codes? Mention access workflows?”

Steve shrugged regretfully. “I’m the wrong person to interrogate on computers.” He looked at Hill. “Surely you know that.”

That didn’t seem to sway the lead researcher. “Mr Stark and Dr Banner spent ten hours working together in an attempt to restore function to the mainframe, with Iron Man and the AI connected. You’re saying you don’t recall a single thing they were talking about?”

Steve crossed his arms in front of his chest and gave her a frank look. “Ma'am, I don’t mean to be disrespectful. But not a word of what those two were babbling about made a lick of sense to me. They might as well have been speaking in Chitauri. I tuned them out and went about sleeping off the giant dose of spider poison I'd just come down from.”

“Nobody expects you to recite rocket science,” said Hill. “But at this point any hint could be helpful.” It was as good as saying they were hopelessly stuck.

“I understand you’re at loggerheads with Tony. But can’t you just call up Bruce and see what he remembers?”

Hill huffed a little snort by way of response. So that was not an option. Meanwhile the woman had begun tapping at the keyboard with a renewed frustration. The sentiment seemed to be contagious. On the far side of the room someone muttered curse words at their terminal.

“Say,” Steve said, watching them work. “I thought Tony took that chip out of the suit? The chip that contained his program."

"We have reason to believe there's a backup in the Chitauri OS." At Steve's blank stare, Hill spelled it out for dummies. "A safe file. A copy of it, if only a partial one. Inside the ship systems."

That made even less sense. "So, if it's JARVIS in there, how come you can't just talk to it? That’s how Tony used to do it.”

“Interface is fucked,” replied the woman without looking up. “It’s full of corrupted data in here. What exactly causes the audio interference is anyone’s guess. Every time we connect it to speakers and a microphone…” She shrugged in a see-for-yourself fashion as she plugged in a jack. “Listen.”

Everyone winced as the room filled with an ear splitting, high pitched electronic sound.

Steve thought it sounded a heck of a lot like a scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SHIELD are still trying to make sense of what they found on the ship. Feel like helping them out a little?
> 
> Take a look at this [transcription protocol.](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/4/4.html)
> 
> Needless to say, keep those three keys handy once you have them. You'll need them later on. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rest in peace to a great man. This chapter is dedicated to Stan Lee.

“How’d it go? They givin' you trouble?”

Happy Hogan stood leaning against the passenger’s door of the Bugatti limousine, grinding a cigarette butt under his heel. He didn’t try to hide the police grade taser attached via a belt clip. It was a perky accessory. The intimidation level was relatively low, considering who they were dealing with.

“Nothing we can’t handle,” said Bruce with more conviction than he felt, and climbed into the car.

He perched somewhat awkwardly in the back seat. He always had a slight fear when sitting in expensive cars, that he was going to do wrong, like scratch the leather or something, and then not be able to foot the bill. But Tony had insisted on sending him out in one of his flagship cars and, as with so many other things, there was no use in arguing with Tony. This had to be done the Stark way.

Bruce liked Happy though. He seemed like a great guy, although managing anything involving human resources clearly wasn't his strong suit. Running security for Stark Industries had turned out to be a little bit too much managing and not enough actual bodyguarding. It hadn't helped that the grief over Tony’s loss had gotten the better of Happy in the early days, with a lot of that grief ending up channeled into taking overboard measures to protect Pepper and the company. Bruce had never run into problems with him, but that was because Bruce had always remembered to wear a pass around his neck.

Pepper, for one, had been inexpressibly relieved to have Happy surrender his position as Head of Security in favor of becoming Tony’s jack-of-all-trades-again. Apparently they’d never had so many staff complaints as during Harold Hogan’s monopoly on absolute surveillance. It was better for everyone if Happy’s area of operations was restricted to all matters Tony. Bruce wasn’t sure how much Happy knew about the circumstances regarding Tony’s return or whether he’d been fed the same white lie as the general public. If he was privy to anything beyond that, he was professionally discreet about it.

“Back to the Tower, Dr Banner?” Happy asked through the rolled down partition.

“That would be great,” said Bruce. “Is Tony in, do you know?”

Although they still had their daily check-ins, lately Tony had been attending them via video conference. His various commitments, mostly media related, kept him on the road more often than was probably conducive for his rehabilitation. A high-stress environment of the kind Tony had plunged himself into was hardly what his psychiatrists were prescribing. ‘Light-to-moderate workload’ and ‘extended rest periods’ were among the common recommendations. Bruce doubted Tony read them, but he was quite certain Pepper did, who was always in the CC of recipients.

It was part of the reason why Bruce had just spent the better part of his morning in a SHIELD debrief room with Maria Hill. Pepper had approached him about it last week, explaining how SHIELD were putting the squeeze on Tony at the most inopportune moment. The earth on James Rhodes’ grave had barely settled when Fury decided to back out of the arrangement they’d negotiated together: that SHIELD would cede the Chitauri ship (sans monsters and weapons, but possibly including the surviving Leviathan) to Tony, and by extent his company, within six months of Tony’s discharge from the island.

Four months into Tony’s return to the public eye Fury had flipped them the bird, leaving Tony to froth at the mouth like a rabid pitbull terrier backed into a corner. Enter Pepper, who had recognized the situation for what it was: an impending nervous collapse on Tony’s part. Gears were put into motion, lawyers let off the leash, with Tony at least superficially pacified, his frustrations at Fury channeled into a newly found zeal to crush SHIELD in a courtroom crusade. They couldn’t handle bad press, was what Pepper said, but Bruce knew she actually meant that they couldn’t handle Tony losing his cool.

Which was the reason Pepper had sent Bruce. There were a thousand questions regarding this or that, most of them of a scientific nature or pertaining to the mission. How to use this, sketch us your route, why is the refrain of Welcome To The Jungle graffitied on the walls more than lyrics of any other song? The last one Bruce had no answer for expect that he knew Tony was into classic rock.

Tony didn’t value this borderline cooperation with SHIELD at all, even though they all knew it was only a formalities thing, a keeping of face. Tony thought going public about the blackmail was a much better idea. He suggested a surprise visit on _Ellen_ , where he intended to drag SHIELD through the same dirt they kept feeding him day in, day out. Bruce thought that was a terrible idea for everyone involved, apart maybe for Ellen DeGeneres’ audience figures, not least because it would put Tony’s own credibility on thin ice, and that was their only strong hand to play if this ended up going South. Pepper’s PR team had pulled triple shifts and overtime to concoct the white lie they were selling. If Tony went out there in a fit of temper, he’d play right into Fury’s cards.

That was why Tony was currently on an interview spree through the Midwest while Bruce Banner, newly appointed Stark liaison to SHIELD, had strict orders from the big guns, aka Pepper, to play hard ball with the boys in black. He’d tried his best to live up to that request. If Maria’s exasperated expression was anything to go by he couldn’t have done too bad of a job. His greatest triumph had definitely been telling her, to the face, that SHIELD could fuck off about a particularly obscene request. No, Bruce would not help them try to decode the space whale control terminal.

“Boss should be in by tonight,” Happy let him know. “Asks if you want to join him and Miss Potts for dinner? 8PM?”

“Sure,” he said. “Thanks, Happy.”

“Don’t sweat it, doc. You’re doing a lot for him. I appreciate that.”

Bruce couldn’t help the flush creeping up on his cheeks. He caught Happy’s eye in the rear view mirror, and suddenly wished he knew where the button to roll up the partition was. Then he felt instantly guilty, because rolling up the partition would be a total dick move.

“Can I ask you something?” Happy said suddenly.

“Of course,” Bruce said, but felt his shoulders tense. He'd answered enough tricky questions for one day.

“Mr Stark’s kinda needlin’ me about working out with him, y’know, a little glove game in the prize ring. So I say, yeah, of course. Wouldn’t do him no bad gettin’ some cardio in, was my thinking. But now I’m in a bit of a pickle. Miss Potts says, ‘Happy, don’t you let him overdo nothing,’ but this is Mr Stark, and overdoing it is kinda his MO, if you get my drift. I ain’t got no MD to my name either, to tell what’s too much or too little with…” He raised his hand off the wheel. “Well, with that. Thought maybe you could help me out.”

Bruce relaxed a little. This was a relatable, pleasant topic, both in terms of hearing that Happy cared so much about his boss, and that Tony actually intended to pursue some form of physical training. In light of what he was facing, it was for the best if he was in somewhat decent shape.

“He’ll have a hard time with the conditioning, so be sure to take that easy,” Bruce said.

“Yeah, he’s huffin’ and puffin’ after a set of stairs. Sure wasn’t like that when we were training together before.”

“Well he’s…” _been having a shit-ton of surgery_ was what Bruce wanted to say, but he reminded himself that maybe Happy didn’t know about Tony’s disastrous encounter with an extraterrestrial oversized calamari. “He’s been through a lot,” he settled for in the end, adding some comic book science about contrasting atmospheric composition and gravity imbalances.

“Oh yeah,” agreed Happy and then added, maybe even a little proudly, “But if anyone pulls through something like that, it’s Tony Stark ‘n no one else.”

“You bet,” said Bruce, but privately wondered if Tony Stark was even remotely done with pulling through anything.

Probably not.

* * *

“So my pants are, like, oscillating non-stop. Real insistent ringer. I’d had my phone put on Silent, but it keeps vibrating in my pocket like it’s a nobbler. The TIME guy looks at me all funny, and by the eighth ringer I call in a timeout. The stupid phone’s riding my nerves. I know it’s nothing big — Jarv’s got override privileges on red-button calls from Pep — but I can’t help but wonder who the eff’s got my private number and—”

“Tony?”

That was Pepper. Tony looked up, the laden fork stopping mid-air, where it’d been drawing circles to complement his gesticulation for the last five minutes.

“Yeah?”

“Maybe a little bit more eating and less talking?”

She pointed demonstratively to hers and Bruce’s empty plates. Ever since they’d left the island and Tony had gotten back into his tumultuous schedule, following his diet plan was a near-impossible undertaking.

“Imeating,” assured Tony while stuffing the forkful of pasta into his mouth. “And it’s delish— but that caller?” Swallow. “You know who that was?”

Bruce smiled politely and shook his head. The President. The Pope. Everyone seemed to be wanting to shake Tony Stark’s remaining hand these days. He wondered when the ruckus would subside, if that was what Tony’s life had looked like before the portal too, and if this was what it was bound to look from here on out. If this was what Bruce’s own life was bound to look like. Nodding politely at dinner tables and trying to make Tony look presentable for his next media expose.

“Who was it?” asked Pepper with the same semi-forced interest. It was just the three of them on a late night after a long day. She’d taken off the make-up. Her eye rings bested his, and even Tony’s, by miles.

“You’ll never guess!” Tony proclaimed with ado, and stopped eating again. “Mr capo di tutti capi. Nick Fury.”

Now that sparked Bruce’s attention, because he’d spent his morning with Maria and there had been no mention of contacting Tony. For Christ’s sake, that’s why Bruce had done this in the first place!

“What did he want?” he asked.

“He left a message on my voicemail. Said it was urgent, that he needed me to call back.”

“Did you?” asked Pepper. There was a faint hint of unease in her voice.

“I didn’t want to at first. Authorized Jarv to field the call if there was going to be a next one. Sure as eggs the damn thing rings again not ten minutes later, right in the middle of me walking the TIMES guy through A Day In The Life Of Astronaut Stark.”

“So?”

“So I excuse myself and go backstage and handle the call. Fury, he’s as shocked as a bird landing on a live wire, hearing my voice.”

“What did he want?” Bruce asked again.

“Dunno what he wanted, but I told him a restraining order was what he was going to get if he didn’t leave off with the bullshit, national security be damned. ‘You have any questions,’ I said, ‘why don’t you go ask the space whale?’”

Tony laughed. He was the only one.

* * *

“Remind me again where you’ve done your neurosurgery residency?”

 _The same place you’ve done your PhD in robotics_ , Bruce thought bitterly. This was a variation of the same conversation Strange and him shot back and forth every time they saw each other. It had been peaking for the past two weeks. Code Green was bound to be a serious threat by the end of week three.

As far as Stephen Strange was concerned, the notion of working together did not seem to involve incorporating suggestions from others. Sometimes Bruce had to pinch himself to make sure he hadn’t died on that spaceship and been sent to purgatory to spend eternity with a guy who looked like a perpetually angry ferret. Even though Strange wasn’t the first person to excel in his field and think that gave him a license to behave like a prick, he was certainly the most extreme example. He was rude in a way that screamed ‘ivory tower’ — that unique way only people completely out of touch with reality could be. It was a shame the man was a brain surgeon and not a vascular one, because at this rate Bruce was going to have a fucking aneurysm.

The thing was that he knew what he was doing. With Tony providing the mechanical expertise and JARVIS being… well, JARVIS, Strange had more or less free reign with the surgical input. The ‘less’ was where Bruce came in. Most of the time he felt like he was on the team less for his scientific background and more in order to act as a human safety valve. Strange was brilliant, much like Tony. But they both saw risks as opportunities to be seized, whereas Bruce, perhaps colored by personal experience, saw them as pitfalls. Wasn’t he the living proof of backlashing self-experimentation? Fortune didn’t always favor the brave. And it certainly didn’t favor the foolish and over-zealous.

There was a delicate balance between playing it too safe and too risky. Too much caution could stifle innovation just as too little could topple it over. Still, Bruce felt that if he didn’t constantly try to steer Strange back from the brink of being too cavalier in the pursuit of a medical breakthrough, it could very well end up to Tony’s detriment.

They were _so_ close, triumph was almost within reach. But Strange, over-confident of success, was getting impatient. He pleaded the case to antedate the surgery so that it would conveniently slot in with the upcoming Annual North American Neuromodulation Meeting. Because if they could demonstrate biocompatibility with the new polymer, then Strange would be able to trot out and rub it in his colleagues’ faces. This wasn’t about disseminating their work, as Strange claimed. It was totally about stroking his own ego in front of a room full of his peers. Bruce wondered if maybe Strange’s mother hadn’t loved him enough when he was a child.

It took every ounce of standing his ground to coax Strange into putting a pin in the date. Tests on the polymer were still pending, as was Strange’s cadaveric practice run, which Bruce had insisted be a mandatory clause in their collaboration.

Unfortunately 'don't be an insufferable jerk' wasn't also one. 

* * *

That evening Bruce cast his eye over some fuck-up of a blueprint cobbled together by R&D, a triple espresso at his elbow. Given his condition, it was probably not the best of ideas to imbibe the amounts of caffeine he did. Then again there were many other things he shouldn’t be doing that he was and, conversely, even more that he should be doing but was stubbornly avoiding. For example, addressing the fact that he still wasn’t properly sleeping, one year on.

Bruce wasn’t a hypocrite (most of the time); he wholeheartedly believed in facing obstacles and overcoming them. Only with this particular set of problems, he didn’t know where to start. He doubted that a weekly session on a couch and a fistful of Certraline would cut it. He turned into a literal monster, for crying out loud! Most people kept that metaphorical, but not so Bruce. In his case, bottling up all the anger and resentment was better — safer — than addressing it head on.

The wonderful thing about repression, Stark-style, was that existing in Tony's world meant there were always handy distractions close by. When his schedule wasn’t filled to the brim with The Strange Tales Of Neurosurgery, he could always distract himself with whatever New Cool Thing R&D was currently sandboxing. Keeping busy had quickly become Bruce’s new drug of choice.

An unfortunate side-effect, as with all addictions, was the creeping danger of spiraling into isolation, especially when Tony was away on the road, which he was more often than not lately. Apart from Bruce’s mandatory interactions with Strange (which were all completely and intolerably draining) his unlikeliest ally turned out to be Happy Hogan. They had absolutely nothing in common save for a mutual interest in Tony’s well being, but that was enough.

Once a week, time permitting, Bruce would find himself sat out on Happy’s back veranda, a bottle of beer pressed into his hand as he was subjected to second-hand smoke from Happy’s cigarettes. Happy didn’t talk a lot, which was fine by Bruce. Mostly they stared out at the New York traffic congesting Manhattan’s streets.

However, traffic was not what Bruce stared at that evening. There were three unchecked emails in his inbox. The first came from Strange, with Tony copied into CC. He’d gone ahead and scheduled the surgery, bulldozing over all of Bruce’s objections. He’d probably booked a speaker’s slot at the Annual North American Neuromodulation Meeting too.

Bruce let out an defeated sigh. He clicked on.

The next one was from Tony, agreeing enthusiastically to the date. ( _The sooner the better. Let’s get this show on the road. --TS_ )

The third was from Steve Rogers, of all people. Bruce straightened himself up from his slouched position. Part of him was momentarily surprised that Steve had an email account and knew how to use it — he’d confessed to Bruce on multiple occasions that the twenty-first century still overwhelmed him — but the opposite would be just as ridiculous. How else would Steve communicate? By sending a telegram?

It was a forwarded message. It offered no commentary on the original, which was from Clint Barton. A small, private memorial service for Natasha. Bruce looked at the calendar. It was scheduled for this coming week. On Saturday. Clint emphasized that the event was to be held on a very small scale, by invite only.

Bruce checked the CC. Tony and Steve were on the list, as well as several SHIELD staff, some of whom he recognized, some of whom he didn’t.

Then his heart sunk.

His own name was not one of the intended recipients.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A day in the life of Bruce Banner, ladies and gents
> 
> Meanwhile, over at Stark Tower [Happy's been keeping busy.](http://chaedandspacelaska.com/5/5.html) But a picture isn't always just a picture.
> 
> So, like any good head of security, we'd urge you to follow the link, look around carefully for hidden clues and dig a little deeper.


	6. Chapter 6

“All right, try again.”

The emerging sound was something in between a drowning cat and one knocked over by a truck. There was a long, strained gurgle.

Tony grimaced. “That’s enough.”

“I’m telling you, man, it’s not the plugs.”

“It’s the plugs. I went over everything else. The valves are good. The pistons are up to code.”

James Rhodes got out the driver’s seat. They bent over the Flathead’s engine together, brooding like hens over a chalk egg.

The ‘32 Ford Flathead roadster was Tony’s crown jewel. His father had purchased it off one of Obadiah Stane’s golf buddies back when Tony had still been a pipsqueak. Howard had looked after the car about as well as he’d looked after his son, ending in a corroded undercarriage and… well, whatever Tony had turned into by that point. The neglect heaped, as did the rust on the roadster and the entry in Tony’s rap sheet (mostly drunk driving).

Tony had only gotten into restoring the car sometime during the late 90’s, long after Howard had bitten the dust. He’d put in a new suspension, tinkered with the engine, ripped out and replaced the interior on multiple occasions. Before all of that though, he’d tended to the rust. Some parts had to go, were irrevocably damaged (see parallels there, if you want to), but much could be salvaged and lovingly restored. The icing on the cake had definitely been the new paint job: hot rod red with a gold flame stencil. A true eye-candy for those who knew to value it. Also, a helluva pussy magnet.

Tony took the Ford out once, maybe twice a year. It was a fair weather ride only, with Tony being extremely nitpicky on conditions. The universe had to be properly aligned to warrant these wheels screeching on asphalt, always followed up by a cleaning job (hand wash only) and a reset of the tinkering cycle.

Three hours later the universe was properly aligned — the fault had been with the sparks as Tony had predicted — and they cruised down the PCH at a leisurely speed, with the engine purring like a fat, satisfied tom.

Tony grabbed another cookie from the box (Oreos Head ‘n Tails, his favorite) and looked out at the coastline. Rhodey drove, steering the roadster smoothly through the curves. Tony didn’t usually like driving shotgun, but with Rhodey he didn’t mind. Rhodey didn’t drive like a granny, an unseemly habit Pepper was sometimes guilty of, and he didn’t do the monotonous cabby impersonation like Happy either. Rhodey always hit the gas in the sweet spot, and never changed gears too early. James Rhodes was as good a driver as he was a pilot, which was why Tony let him fly his suit and drive his car.

“Pepper told me you wanna reanimate the Expo,” Rhodey said, eyes never leaving the road. “That right?”

“Mhmm,” said Tony, munching on another Oreo. “If she says so, guess it is so.”

Rhodey flashed a grin. “She got you by the balls?”

“Tenderly. In the non-kinky way. We just go well together.”

“Uh-huh. She got you by the balls, man.”

Tony was about to set straight who wore the pants in this relationship, when a booming, dull horn sounded behind them. Rhodey looked in the rearview. Tony craned his neck. A super duty big rig was closing in.

“Someone’s in a hurry,” Rhodey said. “Flooring it for his size.”

“Nevermind him. Just another catty bitch,” Tony said and returned his attention to his Oreos and the rising tach on the roadster’s dashboard. “So, the Expo,” he prompted.

“I thought we were talking about Pepper and—”

Another hoot. Tony raised his left arm and gave the one-finger salute.

“Jerk.”

Hoot.

Tony turned around. He exclaimed something about the trucker’s mother that was thankfully carried away by the highway winds. Still, the rig kept advancing. It was practically sticking on their tail now.

“Hey, Tones.”

“What? I’m getting this creep’s plates, I swear.”

“Tony,” said Rhodey.

There was honking from the cheap seats.

“Fuck off!” Tony yelled, before turning back around, turning to see what the hell had Rhodey so pricked.

“Tony,” Rhodey said, just as the eighteen-wheeler lay on the horn again.

“What the— Jesus!”

Rhodey was still holding on to the steering wheel, only the wheel wasn’t attached to the car anymore.

“The rivets,” Rhodey said quietly, as though they weren’t pushing the speedometer to the max with a truck crawling up their asses, and a vintage car that was falling apart around them. “The rivets came loose.”

Tony yanked the wheel out his friend’s hands, tried desperately to correct their trajectory, sharp left, sharp left, the cliff—

“Good morning, sir,” said Jarvis.

Tony sat erect in bed, clutching not the steering wheel of his ‘32 Flathead roadster, but the bunched up comforter. The Pacific sunrise projected over the top-to-bottom shades. There was no mad truck driver in the back. His phone vibrated on the bedside table. The ringtone was set to ‘Submarine Dive Alarm’. He cobbled up the receiver, collapsing back onto the mattress.

It was Pepper. If he was awake — yeah. Was he all right? He sounded off — duh, reasons. (Pepper got the everything’s-fine-babe line though.) Was he going to make it on time for his 10AM appointment, because she’d talked with Happy and they hadn’t left Stark Tower yet. Tony pulled the phone off his ear and squinted at the screen in the half-light. 9:24. He would probably run late, but he was on his way. He should take care, said Pepper. She would arrive late that evening, but he didn’t have to wait up. She loved him. He loved her back. Then he hung up.

“Tell Hap I’ll be down in ten,” he said to Jarvis. “Coffee on the go.”

The bathroom ritual was an abbreviated one. Tony juggled the toothbrush and the shaver, and ended up spitting paste on the charger cable. Still half asleep—

_on a mad drive down the PCH_

—he accidentally tipped over his pill container, and cursed at a sink full of a week’s worth of tablets. It looked like someone had taken a box of Skittles and thrown them like dice in a Yahtzee game. Tony first gripped his head, then gripped a handful of rainbow. He swallowed it dry. Full House, or was that a Large Street?

He hurried out of the master bedroom with his tie half bound, trying to remember that fuckbag’s number plates. With one foot already in the elevator he turned around though, backtracked, and picked up his phone from under the covers. He also took a little gadget from the nightstand and plugged it into his ear.

“Bluetooth on. You hear me, bud?”

“Loud and clear,” answered Jarvis through the earpiece. “Switching to mobile, sir.”

“Sweet. Let’s go spin a story.”

* * *

He did end up late, but conveniently passed the blame on a pile-up on the express lane. Mindy, so said her name tag, didn’t seem to mind. She was getting paid by the hour, regardless if he was sat across from her in her office, or sipping espresso in the back of the Rolls.

Mindy Ramirez headed Tony’s personal PR team, which was most likely the cause of her triplet eye-rings. Tony’s PR team had a lot of work to do. With Strange antedating the surgery, their window of plotting and execution had dwindled to a mere two weeks, fourteen too-short days to figure out how to sell Tony’s impending public downtime to the media. The press would notice (and speculate) his absence either way. Let fire be fought with fire. The masses wanted a story? Tony Stark would give them one.

Mindy wanted to go about it in a cards-on-the-table approach. While he might be able to hide this surgery, ultimately he’d get the prosthesis, and he sure as heck wanted to parade that around. So Mindy Ramirez and her team of whizzes had taken over his various social media accounts and were slowly preparing _@ironman4prez_ to launch a sneak peek into the future of medical technology. If the stump-port was a success, Stark Med would revolutionize the prosthetics field. And if that meant Tony had to vlog out of a hospital bed, so be it.

Mindy wanted to pre-record some stuff to bridge him over the first couple of days. They gave him a johnny gown to put on and slapped some dark shades on him, then hit him with those bright, fluorescent lights that made even a healthy person look like they were suffering from pancreatic cancer. Mindy shoved clue cards into his hand and they went about filming.

By 2PM they were done, but not finished. Tony handed back the hospital gown, but kept the shades. The bright light had made him slightly dizzy and he was sweating. He accepted a glass of water, but that gave him heartburn. Then it was time to leave. Pep had him on a tight schedule. Snug around the balls.

She was letting him off the leash for today as far as the afternoon’s events were concerned though, which was good, because if he was going to lengths about dreaming of Pepper squeezing his testicles, then she was doing it a little too hard. Don’t get him wrong. He was proud, loved to see her do the Dominatrix stint in the boardroom, and on occasion in the bedroom. But along with that pride also came envy, and sometimes it was hard to keep the two apart. Pepper was SI’s top dog while Tony was SI’s dancing monkey. She got to close the big deals while all he got to do was flash a grin for the cameras which was simultaneously his dentist’s hundred grand worthy business card. After being a bad boy and not flossing for four years (forgetting his toothbrush on Earth hadn’t been a satisfying excuse) Tony’s teeth had been another thing in need of rehabilitation.

He was betting more than triple that sum on another horse now, and dearly hoped that Dr Strangely Strange would bolt out of his starting box and fly over the finish line. In the event of a no-start Tony would get run right over by the only other two strong competitors, fan-favorite Fate Is A Bitch, and runner-up One Arm Steady. If one wanted to continue spinning this metaphor, then Bruce, the bookie, kept fretting how big of a mistake it had been to pull Seoul Surprise from the line-up.

But enough about metaphors. The way Tony felt by the time Happy pulled up in front of the Tower didn’t put him in a gambling mood at all. He texted back and forth with Pepper, about how his heart was trying to beat a hummingbird‘s speed record, even though he’d done nothing physically engaging all morning. She wrote _Take a V, it’s just anxiety,_ and he grudgingly slipped two pills under his tongue just before Bruce climbed into the car. Bruce sat there all glum and fidgety, pulling an eyesore over Tony’s pharmaceutically induced poise. Out of the goodness of his heart, Tony attempted conversation.

“You reckon there’ll be snacks at this thing?”

Bruce looked at him for a long, horrified moment, but he offered no opinion either way on finger food. They drove in silence.

In the garage beneath the venue Tony reached a sort of equilibrium. His racing heart slowed, and his stomach settled. The thought of shaking Captain America’s hand in front of assembled crew didn’t faze him one bit. But he knew his balances, and he knew this one was delicate. So delicate in fact, that it would need no outside influence whatsoever to tip.

The room they held the reception in was nice as far as secret government agency memorial service rooms went. It had high ceilings, with colorful stained glass casting rainbows on the stone floor. There was a churchy feel to it, even though it wasn’t a church. It made Tony wonder how regularly such events took place in order to warrant specially built rooms like this. Natasha's picture smiled a secret smile at the mourners from its gilded frame, with the "from" and "to" of her lifespan sporting only the year. Some things were still classified, up to and including date of death.

He put the media face into action for introductions and icebreakers. Most attendees were SHIELD drones, with plastic SHIELD name tags attached to their uniforms. Some of the ladies pulled off the Little Black Dress look better than others. Few of them enticed him.

Fury was also there, predictably, but he skulked in a corner with a face like fizz, and was for once not keen to worm ship information out of Tony. He had his lapdog, Maria Hill, with him too. Tony considered saying hello and playing nice — because that was what Pepper would have him do — but Pepper wasn’t here, so Hill and Fury and SHIELD could all go lay an egg. And so could the man with the big red-white-and-blue frisbee.

Tony didn’t shake Captain America’s hand. Steve made an attempt, but it coincided perfectly with the first crack in Tony’s aforementioned delicate equilibrium. Tony excused himself and asked for directions to the restrooms. There he locked himself in a booth, flipped down the lid, and sat on it with his head heavy in his hands. The palpitations had come back with a vengeance, haunting him like the neurotic truck driver of his dreams. Tony pulled out his wallet, rummaged for another pill and popped it. Then he splashed some water on his face, told his mirror image to hang in tight, and went back to mingle with the mourners.

Somebody had set up a lectern, and Fury commenced with the funeral oration. He passed over to Hill, who stressed how Natasha had been so much more than just a colleague, and how suddenly she had been ripped from this world — at that Tony had to snort, because what did they know? — and that she would be dearly missed by the bereaved.

The eulogy continued in this fashion, shallow and perfunctory, losing Tony’s focus and general interest. He recognized the SHIELD crony from the helicarrier, the one who’d gotten mind-raped by Loki’s wizard staff but then had a change of heart and fought with them in Manhattan. His name was on the tip of Tony’s tongue, but so was Tony’s breakfast, and he swallowed dryly against a rebounding nausea, forgetting all about remembering Clint Barton’s name.

The last pill finally kicked in, pulling at his eyelids like lead weight. Tony zoomed in on the wall mounted clock, and zoned out. He thought of horse races and big rigs and broken spark plugs. Maybe he should have brought Pepper after all. She was good at pulling him out of a fog when he accidentally misjudged his meds, with misjudge being a polite term for tanking them like Smarties.

“‘Scuse me,” he said to no one in particular, setting up for a second lap to the bathroom. This time around his mirror image didn’t look quite as peachy anymore. It was the same expression of frustration he’d glimpsed in the rearview of his dreamworld roadster — because the big rig wasn’t slowing down and all he could do with the steering wheel was play a round of Hula Hoop.

“Tony? Are you okay?”

There was an accompanying knock on the door, then Steve Rogers popped his head around the corner like the epitome of altruism he was pretending to be.

“Couldn’t be better,” said Tony, willing the wraith-like complexion to disappear. The last thing he needed was to pull a faint job in front of Captain Douchebag. “It’s good to see you,” he added, loudly, for the benefit of spies and eavesdroppers. Woah, not that loudly. That was shouting. Pepper's imaginary hand squeezed his forearm. Take it down a notch, T.

Steve squeezed the rest of his broad frame in after his thick skull, and suddenly they were alone in the men’s restroom.

“Look, I don't want any trouble,” Steve burbled. This was about Natasha and her memory, blahdeblah, bullshit-bullshit.

“For a guy not wanting trouble you’re awfully clingy,” said Tony. “Unless you’ve had too many champers in memory of her and need to take a piss, of course. Stalking your victims with a full bladder can’t be any fun.”

“Tony—”

“You left me with her, Steve,” He thought of the med bay and the manacles and the horrible stench. “She was bleeding out like a broken jar. Her legs were snapped back the wrong way.”

Steve blanched. “Tony, please.” He continued in whisper, “Keep your voice down.”

“About what? Captain America’s heroics? Or the way the boo men ripped out her throat? Cause I got plenty on both.”

Now Steve had his hands up in a placatory gesture, which was about as useful as a square wheel. Tony, running on three Valium and a pick-n-choose of this week’s daily selection, was too disinhibited to give a damn about etiquette. Another rap hit the door, just like the honk-hungry truck driver in his dreams.

“Fuck the hell off!” yelled Tony in an eerie sort of deja-vu.

But did they? Of course not. Five minutes later the men’s restroom had turned from pissbox to venue of drama, showcasing one man’s neurotic breakdown. Leading light, yours truly. Fury was there, Bruce was there, even the damn archer was there. This resulted in resistance, verbal assault, and reactions of various penal degree. Steve maintained his claim of not having a choice, Bruce was sorry for something or other, and Fury reverted back to his standard of looking like he was about to shit a brick. A peripheral highlight was an ensuing rant between Barton and Banner. For a moment it seemed like someone other than Tony was about to get clocked.

“You shouldn’t have shown your face in the first place!” Clint.

“You can’t seriously—” Bruce.

“At least I was invi—” Tony.

“ _Guys_ —” Steve.

“You, too, Rogers.” Clint, take two, gearing up. “All of you. Get the fuck out! If it wasn't for the three of you, she'd still be alive!”

More hollering. Go on, thought Tony, ruffling his feathers. The volume rose enough to attract a broader audience, and suddenly Natasha Romanoff ceased to be the afternoon’s main attraction. A lot happened in a very short time. The details hazed over quickly, but he remembered being steered out by the arms, Bruce on one side and Pepper on the other. Only it wasn’t Pepper, it was Steve, and his grip was vice-like.

The next definite setting was the back of the Rolls with its soft leather upholstery. Tony was exhausted, bone-weary tired. Bruce sat beside him, face in his hands, maybe sobbing, definitely being miserable.

Tony dozed off as soon as the engine began to rumble.

* * *

“Tones?” said Rhodey.

Tony looked over, from the speedometer of the roadster, over the snaking asphalt lane of the PCH, to his best friend sitting behind the still-attached steering wheel. There was no truck in sight. The universe was still properly aligned.

“You caked out, man. Put your seatbelt on,” Rhodey said. “Better to be safe than sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there, Rhodey. May you live on forever in Tony's paranoid dreams.
> 
> We would like to outsource today's Easter Egg to the brilliant Zio Prudenzio, whose free paper model templates simply knocked us off our feet. And since Tony's '32 Ford roadster is so important to the future of this story, we'd like to encourage you to [build you own.](https://digilander.libero.it/zioprudenzio/road-d.pdf)
> 
> It'll keep you busy until _at least_ next Tuesday! ;)
> 
> Tell us what you think! Your feedback prevents writer's block!


	7. Chapter 7

‘The Morning After’ was a term held equal parts in awe and dread by those experiencing its immediate impacts. Usually linked with intoxication a number of hours prior to the onset of symptoms, it wasn’t a condition of the pleasant kind..

Bruce had not ingested any alcohol but his stomach still threatened to rebel on him. It was the morning after Natasha’s memorial, and the world — despite all of Bruce’s wishes to the contrary — kept on spinning.

Which meant he would have to come face to face with Tony. And after the performance Tony had turned in yesterday in front of assembled audience, Bruce felt very, _very_ hungover about a certain someone.

But, ever dutiful, Bruce reported to the exam room that was his designated doctor’s office. The sequence was generally as follows: their agreed upon appointment was scheduled for 8AM unless carried out by teleconference when Tony was away. Bruce would be five minutes early, Tony give or take thirty too late. He never apologized, instead usually talking nineteen to the dozen about God knew what.

Today he was both punctual and quiet.

“I need to get some blood work in,” Bruce said blandly, instead of a greeting.

Despite Bruce’s repeated objections, Strange had run every red light in terms of risk minimization, with Tony excitedly riding pillion. It was a matter of damage control now.

“Roll up your sleeve, please.”

He washed his hands, grabbed a syringe and latex band. Tony obediently held out his arm, still in uncharacteristic quiet and contrition. There was always a certain amount of uneasiness when Bruce came in with the tourniquet. It was hard not to feel some sympathy for that, although Bruce’s sympathy reserves were quite depleted this morning. Tony looked off to the side when he tightened the elastic. A vein bulged, eagerly feeding into empty ampules.

“Here, hold this,” he instructed once he had enough. Tony pressed the gauze to the crook of his elbow. A drop of crimson soaked through his white shirt. Bruce bit his tongue not to reflexively apologize. He felt like he was continually apologizing for inconsequentials. Tony Stark’s day wasn’t going to go better or worse because he had a tiny stain on his dress shirt and Bruce couldn’t find it in himself to care which way Tony Stark’s day went outside of the exam room, stain or not.

He put the blood pressure cuff on Tony’s other arm instead and considered his next words as he watched it inflate.

“I need to take a personal day.”

“Are you asking permission?” said Tony, then added hastily, “You don’t have to ask. You know that.”

Bruce twisted the pulse oximeter cable around his fingers. He didn’t want it to look like he was abandoning ship just before they hit the iceberg Strange was steering them into.

“I’ll be around for the surgery,” he assured.

Tony cleared his throat and dropped his gaze. “Yeah… about that. Don’t sweat it. Strange wants to do it solo. Says he prefers his own people in the room.”

Bruce felt the blood rush to his ears. It was by approximation the same feeling he remembered having in school, from being picked last for sports. He unclasped the cuff, found something to busy himself with so he’d have his back turned to Tony. Now he wanted to jump off the damn ship. Do a header. Being ignored was one thing. Being kicked out was on another level entirely. He found himself contemplating what all could go wrong in Dr Strange’s quest to immortalize himself in the annals of The North American Neurosurgeons’ Association. He wondered how badly that would backfire on Tony, and thought it oddly disturbing that he wished the whole endeavor to fail, if only to see his own theories confirmed. Then he felt instantly guilty, which was a much more familiar feeling.

“I messed up my meds yesterday,” said Tony after a while, but it was less apologetic and more matter-of-fact.

“These things happen,” lied Bruce, and didn’t add that it was fine, because it wasn’t. People didn’t show up blitzed to memorial services, nor did they laugh during eulogies or vocally recount the gory details of the demise of the deceased in front of a room full of mourners. These things did not just happen. The ceremony had been important to him, on a deeply personal level. 

Having said that, although Tony had spectacularly contracted foot-in-mouth disease, the honor of making Bruce’s life truly miserable had gone to someone else entirely: Clint Barton.

Clint had pulled Bruce aside for a private word. They hadn’t talked much before the mission, but Bruce knew that the Barton/Romanoff team-up was infamous among SHIELD and went a ways back. He followed Clint without giving it much thought. Another I-never-thought-it-would-be-her monologue, maybe a strained I-appreciate-what-you-did for Bruce’s efforts to try and save her, although he was loathe to take accolades for letting someone’s life slip through his fingers. Natasha had deserved better.

So it came as a surprise when Clint told him, in no uncertain terms, that there was a reason he hadn’t been among the invitation’s recipients, that he was unequivocally to blame for Natasha’s death, and that he was fucking delusional if he thought he’d ever been more to her besides a liability she was ordered to keep her eye on. It was a brutal reproach, the kind only people out of their mind with grief lashed out in.

“Did you know,” Bruce said, “that Clint and Natasha were together? He left his wife and kids for her, years ago.”

“Together as in… an item?” Tony asked. “The archer? The one Loki hypnotized?”

“Yeah.”

There was a pause. Tony mulled it over. “I didn’t know that, no. I was cut off from the rumor mill until recently. But that was her thing, wasn’t it? There were so many versions of Natasha."

Bruce wondered, if only for a moment, which version of her they'd buried.

 

* * *

He took the personal day.

He woke up with nothing lined up to do apart from the realization that he’d shot himself in the foot with his plan of lazing around, because he could really do with a distraction. Bruce’s quarters were situated just beneath the uppermost three floors which were restricted to Tony and Pepper. In lieu of him being Tony’s personal physician, Bruce’s login details granted him access to the communal kitchen sometimes frequented by both of them.

He’d often questioned the sense in allowing him admission to the espresso machine, but not the common room a set of double doors down the hallway. Maybe Pepper just hoped that having Bruce around would help her police Tony's diet.

Upon his arrival this morning Bruce found Pepper sitting at the breakfast bar, neatly put together in a white blouse and pencil skirt. She ate what she ate every morning: a bowl of tinned grapefruit with a side of black coffee. Bruce mumbled a greeting before raiding the refrigerator for the remnants of yesterday’s biryani. He sat down some distance from Pepper and began spooning the rice cold into his mouth, straight from the Tupperware.

“I'm taking a personal day,” he told Pepper.

“We all need those from time to time,” she agreed. She glanced at the time on her phone. It was a habit he’d noticed about her. It was almost as though she mentally allotted herself a suitable amount of time in her schedule for a conversation.

Sure enough, she spoke again. “Are you doing okay? After the memorial?”

“Yes,” he said, but relented quickly to, “Well, no. Not exactly. But I’d say it’s an appropriate amount of not-fine. I just need a day to get my head together.” That was true enough. Natasha’s memorial, be it the catastrophic reality or a smooth progress of events, wasn’t going to make her any more or less dead.

“Tony feels badly about what happened,” offered Pepper, and she seemed a little embarrassed. Maybe she felt like she should be past the days of apologizing on Tony's behalf. She'd told Bruce once how formal apologies had been half of her job description back in the days when Tony had been just a feckless playboy with a penchant for hookers and blow.

“I told him not to worry about it. He mixed up his meds. It’s not like he did it on purpose.”

Although it sure had felt that way, like a punch to the gut when a glassy-eyed Tony had thrown him under the bus.

Pepper brightened a little nonetheless. “Good thing it was a private event.” Because the red tape surrounding Black Widow’s early retirement had been the only thing saving Tony’s media reputation. And as long as that was intact, no harm no foul, right?

“For sure,” he said in strained agreement.

It occurred to him that this was a good moment to share some of his concerns. About Tony’s mental state, and the toll his PR appearances took on him. About Strange pushing for experimental surgery, and about whether Tony was psychologically robust enough for a series of grueling procedures. But as he gathered his courage, Pepper glanced at her cell phone again. Evidently, his time was up. She made to stand, looking faintly apologetic.

“I understand,” he said with automatic politeness, waving her off. “Go. Don’t be late.”

She patted him on the shoulder as she passed. “Have a good day, Bruce.”

At least she sounded like she sincerely meant it.

* * *

He had a notion that he’d get out of the city, drive somewhere pretty to sit and think. In the end he let the morning run away, sitting at the marble countertop of the breakfast bar and drinking his way through Tony’s expensive coffee. By the time he had showered and dressed, it was nearly midday.

That was when his cellphone rang. Maria Hill’s name flashed up on the screen and Bruce cringed as the phone kept vibrating for his attention. He overcame his internal struggle and picked it up just before it went to voicemail.

“I already told you no,” he said without preamble. “Or I'm about to tell you no. One of the two. And it's my day off.”

“I'm not calling about the ship,” said Maria. “And I'm not calling from SHIELD. It's my day off too.”

This surprised Bruce enough that he sat down on the edge of his bed. Was he getting social calls from Maria Hill now? Was this how it worked? Switch out one pretty face with another and expect him to play along?

“If this is Fury’s way of—”

“Fury doesn’t have anything to do with this, Bruce.” Her tone was sincere enough, then turned into almost hesitant. “Can we meet? I have something for you.”

Two hours later they sat side by side in the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art, looking at Maillol’s _The River_ while clutching coffee in corrugated cardboard cups. It was one of Bruce’s favorite spots in the city, so he really hoped Maria wasn’t going to ruin it by dumping more unpleasant news on him. She certainly had that look on her face.

“You had a right to be there. You meant something—”

“Can we not?” he cut her off. He didn’t want to know what Maria Hill thought he’d meant to Natasha.

“I’m sorry,” said Maria. It was strange seeing her out of her agent getup. Her hair was loose and she wore sneakers and jeans instead of a uniform. She looked a lot younger like that, maybe early thirties. Bruce looked back out at the sculptures.

“I don’t imagine it gets easier,” he said. “Coming to terms. But that’s not why you’re here.”

“No,” said Maria quietly. She swung her handbag into her lap and opened it. It looked as though she was searching for tissues in case this was going to end in tears, but it wasn’t a box of Kleenex she pulled out in the end. It was an envelope made from creamy colored paper. On the front, in looping copperplate handwriting, it read _Dr Robert Bruce Banner._

“What’s that?”

“Natasha left a will,” explained Maria. “We had to check it — corporate policy, you’ll understand — but there are very clear instructions that she wanted you to have it.”

He turned the envelope in his hand. The wax seal on the back was broken. He felt suddenly ashamed, picturing SHIELD staff going indifferently over something inherently personal.

He nodded dumbly. “I appreciate it. Thank you.”

“I'll leave you to it,” Maria told him, patted him on the shoulder in similar fashion to Pepper that morning, and disappeared among the faceless visitors of MoMA’s sculpture gardens.

Bruce stared at the envelope. He picked at the broken seal, turned it over and back, drew his thumb across the lettering. Then he opened it, trying and failing not to tear the paper.

_Hey Big Guy,_

_If you’re reading this, it sucks to be me._

_I’ll miss the tea house afternoons. Have a Ceylon in my honor._

_Take care of yourself and keep that temper under control._

_\-- Natasha_

  
Bruce re-read the letter twice before carefully folding it up and tucking it into his breast pocket.

He wondered what she had left for Clint.

* * *

“You gotta be there though,” Happy admonished between a mouthful of pizza.

Bruce picked listlessly at the pieces of pineapple adorning his own slice. He formed a little yellow pile in one corner of his plate.

On finding out that he was free for the day, Happy had unilaterally decided to indoctrinate him into the world of Netflix and Domino’s. On tonight’s binge viewing line-up was an all-time favorite, Downton Abbey. Bruce, who despised period dramas, only mustered vague interest in the insider material confided by Happy, who could recount the series chapter and verse. Far more pressing than turn-of-the-century British matrimony dramatics was the letter still tucked inside Bruce’s pocket. It worried at him like a dark thing, insidious in its ways.

Happy Hogan might not have been particularly academic, but he was good at spotting when something was off. Working for Tony for over two decades had honed his skill of sniffing out trouble. Bruce didn’t want him to know about the letter; he knew Happy would be discreet, but he didn’t feel comfortable crying his heart out about a woman whose only inheritance to him was a prompt to have a cup of tea in her memory. It was easier to let Happy think that whatever was on his mind was related to Tony.

He shrugged. “It's not up to me, that’s the thing.”

“But you gotta,” insisted Happy. “I know you and the boss are havin’ your differences, and maybe he wasn't at his best the other day, but you hav’ta be there. Between you ‘n me, I don't like that Strange fella.”

“He's a dick,” Bruce agreed. “But he's a very good doctor. Better than me.”

Happy fell silent. One of the main heroines on screen had a (very) slow burning affair with her chauffeur. This romantic tension was cause for intense concentration on Happy's part. Bruce continued to pick at his lukewarm pizza.

Happy thrust a twenty deck of Marlboros under his nose. “You want one? Not like you’ve gotta worry about your health, right?”

Happy’s apartment was located across the street from Stark Tower. For whatever reason Happy didn’t want to live on site. Bruce imagined it was at least partially connected to his smoking habit, and Pepper’s reluctance to allow a laissez-faire smoking policy under her roof.

Bruce opened his mouth to politely decline, then watched in a stupor as his fingers closed around one of the cancer sticks. Happy lit it for him. The smell brought up memories of school and bicycle sheds, and the faint longing to be part of the cool kids. It felt cozy and conspiratorial, even though they were grown men and he’d just mentally compared Happy’s flat to one of those crowded smokers’ booths at airports.

Bruce inhaled. The nicotine hit him in a tingle across his cheeks, then caught in the back of his throat. He imagined Natasha puffing through a cigarette holder à la Audrey Hepburn. They would be sat together in a tea house in St Petersburg, in winter, and they'd drink Ceylon.

Then panic overcame him, because he thought about nicotine addiction and nicotine withdrawal, and the fair chance of the Other Guy clamoring for a Marlboro Menthol Light when he’d get the itch and there wouldn’t be a smoke in sight. Bruce let the rest of the cigarette taper out in his fingers, tapping it into the ashtray every so often. Happy didn’t notice either way.

“I’ll be there when he wakes up,” Bruce said eventually. “And I’ll help with the recovery. There’ll be more to the process than just plugging it in. He’s looking at a lot of physical. The surgery’s just the first step, you know.”

Happy seemed pleased enough by this. “You’re the doc. Whatever you say goes.”

They watched the last twenty interminable minutes of overwrought British tripe in silence before Bruce lied about having enjoyed it, promised to come back for more, and left the apartment block with yellow stained fingers and a knot in his stomach.

Crowned with arc reactor powered neon letters, Stark Tower loomed ahead like a black-scaled lumbering behemoth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bruce Banner's day off. Ferris Bueller he is not.
> 
> If you wondered what Clint's letter looked like...
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's been leaving feedback. We appreciate it so very, very much. 


	8. Chapter 8

Bruce stood outside of _Sun’s Organic Garden,_ the little tea shop which he'd frequented with Natasha. He liked the smell of loose leaf tea, the quiet booths, the dusty china plates on the walls. It looked like Sun’s grandmother had had a say in the decor arrangement, but Bruce didn’t mind. This pocket of town was one of the few that had escaped unscathed during the Chitauri conflict. That alone made it a special kind of precious.

He entered, ringing the bell above the door. Immediately, a petite Asian waitress appeared to show him to the booth in the alcove by the window. Their regular spot. Somehow it had always been free when they’d met up here.

He picked up the menu and went through his options, briefly stopping on the blackcurrant cordial Natasha used to order and drink through a straw. He’d sought out _Sun’s_ shortly after returning from Tony’s island domicile, buying a bottle of the stuff because he couldn’t stop thinking of her. It still stood, abandoned and unopened, in the refrigerator of Tony and Pepper’s shared kitchen.

“What will it be today?” asked the waitress.

Bruce looked at the menu some more. He almost said Licorice or Peppermint, his go-to choice, then surprised himself by blurting out, “Ceylon, please.”

He tried to remember a time either of them had actually drank Ceylon here, but failed to come up with an instance. Bruce had no special fondness for it. But the words on Natasha’s letter reverberated in his mind. A Ceylon in her honor. He could do that, at least.

While he waited for his order, Bruce checked the time on his phone. Tony’s surgery was scheduled to begin in an hour. Yesterday Tony had stopped by Bruce’s flat, thanking him for all the work he’d put into this. It had been a genuine thank-you speech, something that didn’t make it out of Tony’s mouth very often. Incidentally, gratitude had not been the only thing out of Tony’s mouth.

“You don’t have to check in tomorrow,” Tony had added. “Strange says he’ll toggle the obs chart. I got five-star room and board, all-inclusive at the spa. Why don’t you take a day?”

Bruce had smiled tightly, and bit back the prophecy of doom and gloom on the tip of his tongue. Tony and Strange both had that combination of arrogance and privilege which went hand in hand with the ability to always land on their feet. Contrary to Bruce, they weren’t condemned to a lifetime of fastidious caution.

The Ceylon arrived, steaming hot. For a tea shop, Bruce thought, they really could have made with a better tea strainer. Leaf sediment migrated to the center and bottom of the cup. Bruce stirred, spreading the aroma. Yes, he was miffed about Tony. But was he maybe being a little unfair himself? Four years of brutal isolation along with losing both his left arm and best friend… and Bruce was sitting here resenting him for what exactly? For having the audacity to make an attempt at moving on with his life after such a major trauma? For taking advice from a highly specialized neurosurgeon with an impeccable track record over an erstwhile physicist turned fugitive turned medic?

He shook his head and checked the time again. Tony would be in the prep room by now, the anesthesiologist talking him through the routine pre-op checklist, with Pepper waiting idly while Strange got his team ready to carry off the laurels.

Bruce asked for the bill halfway through his tea. As anticipated, he didn’t enjoy the Ceylon’s bitterness. Fulfilling Natasha’s last request did not bring him any satisfaction. On the contrary. He felt played. Ridiculed. She’d never seen any more in him than another job assignment. She couldn't even remember what tea he liked to drink. Surely she’d never sought out a tea house with Clint Barton.

He’d go to the hospital, Bruce decided. Pepper could use the moral support. What else would he do anyway? Procrastinate? Because that had worked out splendidly so far. The waitress returned, on her tray a little wooden box which housed the receipt. Bruce pulled out his wallet.

“It’s on the house,” said the girl. Then, as though fighting with herself whether to add something or not, she hesitantly said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Bruce looked up sharply.

“What?” he asked, only to spy her hasty retreat into the back kitchen. She didn’t return.

Bruce stared dumbly at the wood box in front of him. He pushed open the lid, picking up the slip of paper inside. Sun’s Organic Garden, it read, and _1x Ceylon 0.00$_ and _TIPS NOT INCLUDED._ Beneath it it, someone had written more: Numbers. Degrees, minutes, seconds.

GPS coordinates.

Something jingled as he pulled the receipt out completely. Bruce turned the wood box over. A key clattered onto the table. Attached to it was a small white plastic tag with _154_ stamped on it.

Bruce’s heart hammered dangerously.

It was the key to Natasha Romanoff’s safety deposit box.

* * *

Bruce had never accessed a safety deposit box before. He had no idea on the processing, working himself up to the point where he was sure the moment he stepped foot in the bank the security guards would refuse him access, key or no key.

After much trepidation, he walked stiffly to the counter and blurted out all of his above fears. If anything, that solidified his belief that he was highly ill-suited for a career in espionage. Bruce went over the paperwork handed to him by a clerk. Not only had Natasha put the box up in his name, she’d also done an excellent job at forging his signature. If Bruce had learned anything about Natasha Romanoff these past few months, then that she was unpredictable. Two million in bunched up hundred dollar notes could await him, or maybe just a coupon for the tea house, a full circle wild goose chase.

Natasha’s heritage was three-part, but none had to do with money or Ceylon. First, a faded postcard. _Greetings from West Virginia! s_ plashed in Comic Sans across a picture of an open field bordering on forest. Second, another set of keys, this time attached to a metal keyring in heart shape, red enamel chipped away by time. Third was a newspaper clipping from the turn of the century. It detailed plans for the world’s largest steerable radio telescope to go operational in Pocahontas County.

Bruce pulled out his phone and looked for the nearest car rental company.

* * *

Green Bank, West Virginia, was home to the eponymous Green Bank observatory. Before 2012 Green Bank had struggled with looming bankruptcy, detractors talking about defunding the telescope entirely. That had been before the Chitauri invasion. Nowadays the government was falling over itself to throw money at anything astronomy-related. Star-gazing had become a national defense priority overnight.

While Tony lay under the knife back in New York, Bruce set out in his rented Chevrolet on a long drive with minimal rest stops. He reached Green Bank by late afternoon, a tiny rural landmark within the United States National Radio Quiet zone. He’d turned his cell phone off in order to preserve his dwindling battery and now he was prohibited by law from turning it back on. At least he’d thought of texting Pepper beforehand, letting her know he would be running late. Whatever had come over him to drive out here on this day of all days — on the strength of a fading postcard and an ambiguous newspaper clipping no less — Bruce couldn’t say. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision if he’d ever taken one.

Unsurprisingly, he couldn’t get into the observatory. It was wrapped up by lines of barbed wire fencing snaking around the perimeter. Every couple hundred feet yellow sign posts alerted passersby that _TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED._ It wasn’t as though he could just jimmy open a window and climb in. It was probably for the best if he stayed far enough away so the CCTV couldn’t catch him. Because Bruce Banner and anything US military made such suitable bedfellows.

What had felt like a great sense of urgency in the tea parlor now seemed like a truly stupid mistake. Here he was, in the middle of nowhere, with only a few hours of daylight left and no clue where to start looking. Even if he made up his mind and left right away he was likely to miss Tony waking up from his surgery.

Bruce gave a sigh of frustration. What had he expected to find? Natasha alive and well, camping out in West Virginia? No posthumous scavenger hunt was going to change what had happened.

He kicked at a rock. God, how dumb he felt! How could he let her, even in death, give him the runaround so easily? He had to turn around, right now, drive out of the Radio Quiet Zone and check in with Tony, who would no doubt flagrantly disregard any and all medical advice.

Bruce doubled back, cursing as the evening sun dazzled him. He covered his eyes, squinting through his fingers. His stomach flipped. He pulled out the postcard. He held it up against the expanse of countryside beyond the car. It was the same angle, the same field, the same forest. The postcard picture had been taken in bronze-dipped autumn, whereas the grass grew high and tall today on a late spring day. But there was no doubt — it was the same location.

There was one deviation though.

Just beyond the postcard border’s edge stood an old ramshackle farmhouse. Bruce fingered for the keys in his pocket, feeling the outlines of the little heart-shaped keyring.

Home is where the heart is. Wasn’t that how the saying went?

* * *

He thought of _TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED_ as he approached the fence line. If the farmer was a shoot-on-sight kind of guy, the authorities would have a decidedly greener problem on their hands There was no trigger-happy farmer though. The estate was abandoned, windows boarded up, the surrounding land and garden long having fallen into disrepair. A treehouse rotted in an old spruce. A rusty swing set hung underneath. It creaked in the breeze.

Bruce walked up to the front door, pulled open the fly screen and knocked.

“Hello? Anyone home?”

No answer.

He fished out the key, scraping some more enamel off the heart-shaped accessory in the process. What in the nine hells was he doing? Housebreaking, a new low for Bruce Banner? The key turned smoothly in the lock. A cool hallway greeted him, smelling damp and stifling of dereliction. Bruce tried the light switch, but wasn’t surprised to find electricity out. The place looked like it had been a while since someone had bothered to pay the bills.

Sighing, he gave himself a tour through the ghost of a family home. Some walls sported early mould. A thick layer of dust had settled over carpets and shelves. He made his way from the disused kitchen with crayon marks still on the table, to the living room where a musty doll lay forgotten against one leg of an equally musty sofa. Children’s heights were etched on the door frame in black marker, one line to commemorate the passing of each year.

 _Cooper, 6_ was a head taller than _Lila, 3._ Above them, just over his eyeline, were two more marks. _Mommy_ and _Daddy._

Bruce swallowed hard. He felt an impulsive urge to turn heel and flee, unable to shake the image of Natasha carving lines into door frames instead of the bodies of her SHIELD sanctioned targets. He was terribly ashamed as he lined himself up (and pretended not to) next to the tallest mark of the group.

Upstairs he found the children’s bedrooms. One had peeling lilac on the walls, the glossy paper curled and stiff at the edges. Blue silver rocket ship decals adorned the other. It wasn’t a stretch to guess which one had belonged to Lila and which one to Cooper. Beyond that lay the master bedroom. Birds had gotten in through the open window, christening the place with shit and feather. The wardrobe door hung ajar. Men’s shirts, mostly plaid, were eaten by moths and rotted at the hems.

Bruce sat on the creaky mattress, going for the nightstand drawer. If there were terrible secrets to be uncovered, surely they waited there. Nobody with a sense of covertness hid their skeletons in the closet. Such things belonged in nightstand drawers.

The occult took the form of a silver photo frame encasing a family portrait. Cooper was there, beaming gap-toothed at the camera, with little Lila clutching her mother’s leg and sucking her thumb. It was not a picture of Natasha. The relief was so great, it took Bruce a moment to focus his attention on the man towering behind his family. He’d never seen Clint Barton sporting that wide of a grin in real life.

Clint had left his wife and children to be with Natasha, that much Bruce knew. It had been a revelation slapped straight into his face at Natasha’s memorial, and not all too discreet at that. He remembered asking Natasha about Clint once, after New York during one of their first meetings at _Sun’s Organic Garden._ “We’re close,” Natasha had said in her typically elusive fashion. Bruce had interpreted that in the way he wanted to hear it. As a he-has-my-back kind of close, certainly not a he-jumps-my-bones kind of close. No wonder Clint hated him. He was the creepy stalker with the unrequited crush who’d failed to return their shared love interest back alive.

But what sense did it make for Natasha to bring him here from beyond to grave? There had to be more to this than taking Bruce on a morbid tour of the marriage she’d wrecked.

He made his way back down the stairs, continuing his sweep of the house. A small home office was out back, and a playroom with a reading nook for the kids. Cushions were on the floor, with small shelves painted in primary colors, enhanced by cartoon stickers. Bruce’s lips quirked up as he spotted Iron Man, slightly faded, rocket across a baby blue shelf stuffed to the brim with children’s books. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Cat In The Hat, Practical And Theoretical Applications of Gamma Radiation, The Lion The Witch And—

Bruce’s eyes darted back to the extremely familiar title. It had taken him a year to write a rough draft, with the book published some six months before his accident. It had been an academic labor of love on his part. In lieu of everything that followed, he’d almost forgotten about it. He was pretty sure it was well out of print by now — and it certainly didn’t belong onto the Barton kids’ bedtime reading list.

Bruce picked up the thick hardcover. Four-hundred-thirty-two pages of nuclear physics. _For Betty_ , read the dedication, a relic from another life. He flicked through the pages, looking at this diagram and that, wondering what he would change and improve in an imaginary second edition.

The book fell open on Chapter 12 _._ Someone had put a giant dog-ear in the page. Bruce pursed his lips, setting to straighten it out. It was an unseemly habit he hated. He thought he might even have told Natasha so on occasion, taking it as yet another act of satire.

What he hadn’t expected waited taped to the underside of the dog-ear. Bruce picked at the adhesive tape, removing an ultra-slim, aluminium USB flash drive. He'd naively thought that this house was the culmination of whatever Natasha had wanted to show him.

Now he realized it was just the preamble.

* * *

There had been nothing else of note in Clint Barton’s farmhouse. It was dark by the time Bruce pulled into the parking lot of a highway Motel 6, halfway between Green Bank and New York City. He’d planned on driving all the way back, head reeling from this latest discovery, but the adrenaline had left him a few hours into the trip. Afraid of falling asleep at the wheel, Bruce exchanged his credit card details for a plastic keycard.

He collapsed on the bed, too tired to undress. He pushed off the heel of one shoe with his foot, then struggled in equal fashion with the other. Having escaped the Radio Quiet Zone, he fumbled for his switched-off cell. If he didn’t put up an alarm for early morning, exhaustion would keep him down well past check-out time.

Bruce turned it on, waiting for the phone to boot up. It easily found reception (4G, no less), and he made to switch to the Alarm screen.

That was when the Missed Calls messages began to dribble in.

There were twenty-seven from Pepper.

One was from Stephen Strange.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the home invasion, Laura, but you've been gone for a while already, haven't you?
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 


	9. Chapter 9

“We'll get you into the anesthetic room around eleven and after th—”

“Hang on,” interrupted Tony, pacing around his en suite in a johnny gown and compression stockings. “When you say ‘we’ that includes Jarvis, right?”

Jittery wasn’t even close to Tony’s condition. He’d barely slept that night, waking up every hour on the hour, grunting and sighing and being otherwise obtrusively noisy. He’d thrown in the towel at close to 5AM, but his retreat out of the bedroom hadn’t helped Pepper get any rest. They were both nervous.

“Tony,” she interjected slowly. “We talked about this.”

Tony folded his arms emphatically. “I’m not doing it without J. I thought the network was all set up? Don’t tell me it’s not all set up yet.”

It wasn’t. This prompted another round of pacing. Strange, grasping at the last strands of patience, said stiffly, “We established that your AI doesn’t have over a decade of neurosurgical experience. Or, you know, hands. Because if it did, then I wouldn’t have spent the last two months regretting getting involved with you and your people.”

Pepper sighed and massaged her temples. Predictably Tony bit right back like a cornered dog. “You don’t seem to regret the paychecks you’ve been cashing,” he said.

“Look,” said Strange. “You hired me to do a job. Let me do it.”

“I need my arm back,” said Tony. “And I need Jarvis to be in that room.”

Strange stood firm. “And I can give you one of two. I signed on to this because it can be something monumental. It stops being that when you insinuate that I need to be babysat by a talking laptop.”

Tony had become far too dependent on Jarvis. He’d always involved the AI, but ever since Jarvis’ resurrection on the island Tony was building towards a point where he couldn’t complete common day-to-day scenarios on his own. Jarvis had become his security blanket, and Tony clung to him obsessively. He could barely decide on a lunch order without having Jarvis calculate this odd or that. Pepper understood that, after four years of nothing but Jarvis, Tony used him to bridge the gap between the ship and the world around him, but it was starting to be more of a crimp than a crutch.

“I want him there,” Tony insisted.

“To do what? Backseat drive?”

“It wouldn’t be like that.”

“My OR. My rules,” said Strange. “Take it or leave it.”

Tony looked positively mutinous. But in the end he relented. Even he could see that it was a sacrifice worth making, if he could have back his arm.

* * *

The surgery was to be long and complex. Strange said he aimed for a sub-twelve hour procedure, then followed that up by telling Pepper it could last as long as sixteen, and she needn't worry. A nurse would keep her regularly updated.

As comfortable as the private waiting room was, with its white leather couch and the neutral decor, it didn’t help at all with Pepper’s anxiety. She hated hospitals, maybe even more so than Tony himself. She;d harbored a dislike for medical institutions ever since she’d been dragged in to visit her dying uncle at the impressionable age of ten. All the little details had stuck, even thirty years on. The raspy breath, the mask over his face, the yellow-tinged skin, the antiseptic smell battling that of sickness. That smell would be forever tied up with the feeling of impending loss.

To pass the time she tried working on her laptop, but only succeeded in piling up a drafts folder of wisely unsent emails. When she was worried she became frustrated, and when she was frustrated she became bitchy. At least that was what Tony always claimed. It was probably better to sit on any scathing replies until morning.

As promised, a nurse arrived with an update every two hours. Things went well. Things still went well. Things continued to go well. Bruce sent a text message that he’d be late, preempted by his traditional opener of being sorry. Pepper suspected he was more hurt than sorry, seeing as how Tony had benched him on Strange’s behalf. He hadn’t made half the fuss about sacking Bruce from the operating theater as he’d made about Jarvis though.

The grip of anxiety began to take hold when the nurse didn’t come in at the next full hour. Pepper told herself it was fine, that she was probably just dealing with a shift change. The next person on had simply forgotten about updating her. She ordered from the in-house restaurant, not because she was hungry, but because having food delivered would break up the monotony of waiting and worrying.

She hardly touched the meal.

* * *

They breached the twelve hour line. No message, good or bad.

She texted Bruce: _You en route?_

* * *

They wouldn't let her in, not as she argued and cajoled and demanded. It was well past midnight when Strange emerged, exhausted and exasperated, from behind the off-limits doors. He looked horrified, defensive, even his trademark smugness gone mute.

“It was experimental,” he said, and didn’t have to say any more.

The muffled sound of Tony sobbing in the recovery room said the rest.

* * *

They let her see him, just for a few moments, once he was out of the post-anesthesia care unit. He was sedated, but even in sleep his face was creased and unsettled, as though the pain was seeping through his dreams. Strange talked about neuralgia and the prospect of a medically induced coma and would she please sign here. She didn't know what to do but she had the strong sense that she needed to advocate for Tony, to make sure that whatever was about to happen was in his best interests. But she was no medic and Strange talked at her rather than to her.

This was supposed to be Bruce’s job, for crying out loud! She tried his phone again, and again it went to voicemail. Pepper fired off another text.

_get_

_here_

_NOW_

!!!

* * *

The following week saw Tony full of ketamine, Bruce full of apologies, and Strange full of shit. Pepper would have called it the worst week of her life, but she'd watched Tony fly through a wormhole and then had to bury his empty coffin, so it probably only ranked second or third.

The surgery had gone badly wrong. Instead of regenerating the nerve endings, whatever synthetic compound had been used now caused them to overload, leaving Tony in agony. The only thing that even vaguely touched the pain was ketamine, but it made Tony insensible, vomiting and, most disturbingly, hallucinating.

The latter caused a heated fight between Bruce and Strange, with Strange wanting to keep Tony doped up until he figured out a remedy, and Bruce insisting that the last thing Tony needed was to relive past traumas from the bottom of a k-hole. Both tried to get Pepper on side, since she had power of attorney over Tony while he was incapacitated. Everyone tried to pass off the blame. Strange accused Bruce of fucking up the biochemistry while Bruce accused Strange of ballsing the surgical approach. Tony, in his conscious moments, accused his parents for ever having conceived him.

In an act of contrition for not being present at the surgery, Bruce was determined to conduct his own personal round-the-clock vigil at Tony’s bedside, which was honestly more hindrance than help, because not only did Pepper have to deal with Tony in pain and miserable, but now also had to manage Bruce’s spiraling neuroticism.

This all led to the here and now, them gathering for a mid-morning summit in Tony’s sick room. Tony was pale and sweating, the drugs having been dialed back enough for him to be able to hold down a sober conversation. Pepper hoped his judgment wasn’t impaired. She was terrified of making the wrong choice, alone, on his behalf.

“Good morning.”

Strange delivered the greeting with all the sincerity of a lizard, picking up the chart by the foot of the bed. He wrinkled his nose and let out a sharp sigh. “Please stop annotating my patient’s records, Dr Banner. I’ll remind you, again, that you are not a practicing medic at this facility.”

Bruce shot him an ugly look in response and opened his mouth to retort when Tony let out a loud groan.

“I swear Hell is listening to you two sniping at each other all day. Can’t you drop it for one damn minute?” He sat up straight for emphasis, but the move cost him most of his residual energy. Instinctively Pepper moved closer. She put a supporting hand on his shoulder.

“I didn't even say anything,” countered Bruce like a kid caught talking in class.

Strange brushed past the whole exchange, unfazed. He brushed the tip of his gloved finger over the synthetic port now capping off Tony’s forearm. The stump itself was even more hideous than before, with a raw new graft standing out against the iodine stained skin. There was no need for a medical degree to appraise that, on top of everything else, it was developing an infection.

“Do you feel that?”

Tony ground his teeth. “I can only sleep if you put me on horse tranqs. I’m telling you, it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse. Everything up to my armpit is on fire. It wasn’t this bad when I cut the damn thing off.”

Strange pursed his pale, thin lips together, a slight furrow to his brow.

“Put him on clonidine as well as ketamine,” he said, seemingly giving orders to the air. Pepper wondered if he had any other mode of communication than to pretend there was an imaginary subordinate in the room.

“Because enriching my pill diet will make such a difference,” Tony said.

“I’m more worried about the infection than the pain, Mr Stark,” Strange said. “We'll continue with IV broad spectrum antibiotics, up the dose. Results from the latest swabs should be back by this afternoon. Treatment will be modified as necessary.”

Tony snorted derisively. “Yeah, that sounds like a long term plan.”

Strange held up a hand. “I'm not finished. We only applied the treatment to the terminal inch of the nerve. It might feel like your whole arm is involved, but it isn't. Worst case, we’ll remove the impaired tissue and start anew.”

Pepper was certain she’d misheard. “You want to do another amputation? Higher up the arm?”

Tony cradled the bandaged stump closer. “Not if hell freezes over.”

“You’ll still keep the joint,” Strange said. “Functionally it won’t make a difference. It’s the most pragmatic plan in case of a non-success.”

Tony shook his head vehemently. “No, no, no. Forget it. I’m not surrendering an inch—”

“Actually it would be closer to two,” Strange corrected cooly, waving past everybody’s very apparent horror. “Three, if the damage is extensive.”

“There has to be another option,” Pepper implored. They weren’t prepared for this.

Tony pushed the sheets off, trying and failing to climb out of bed. “No, that’s it. I’ve had it. I’m going home. Jarvis will do it. Jarvis will…” But he trailed off, at a loss himself about what Jarvis would be capable of accomplishing.

Strange cleared his throat. “If you’d at least be open for discussion...”

“What part of 'this-absolutely-isn’t-happening' did you fail to understand?” Pepper’s voice was a shard of ice. She was positioned like a physical partition between Tony and Strange, as though the latter might pull out a scalpel and start cutting right then and there.

Bruce, so far silent bystander, spoke up thoughtfully. “You know, at this point there really might not be many alternatives.”

Strange looked vaguely satisfied, as if he'd just been vindicated. Tony looked like Bruce had picked up the imaginary scalpel and stabbed him in the back with it.

“Bruce,” Pepper said, her tone retaining a sharp edge. “I get that you're trying to help, but I don't think you should be a part of this decision-making process until you've gotten some rest.”

“I'm tired, not stupid,” Bruce said flatly. “Just think about it. Ask Jarvis. Bring in Cho as a consult too, which we should have done in the first place.” He shot a baleful look at Strange. “But if the damage is done, we might not have a choice.”

“It’s lovely how you’re all viewing this as a democratic polling,” said Tony. “But let’s not forget that, ultimately, we’re talking about _my_ arm here. Mine. Down to the last shriveled nerve end. I think this gives me exclusive veto rights on any mind-bendingly dumb ideas, which is all I’m hearing here.”

He homed in on Strange. “I played with fire, I got burned. But chopping it off now, that’s not experimental, that’s barbaric. I wanted science-fiction, Dr Strange. I won’t settle for medieval. And you.” Tony turned to Bruce. “Go home, sleep. I’m not taking advice from someone who looks worse than me and whose next brilliant solution might come down to ‘smash’.”

“Put Cho on a plane,” he continued. “Tell her Dr Strange is thrilled to meet her, so much in fact, that he’s more than willing to cancel his weekend retreat in the Hamptons. I want viable treatment plans by Saturday. And God forbid any of them containing the word amputation or synonyms thereof.”

* * *

After that disastrous morning things evened out slightly. Not from Tony’s point of view necessarily, since he still required heavy amounts of medication just to suffer through being conscious, but for Team Stark things were finally starting to pull together.

Stephen Strange had managed, by some miracle, to dial his attitude back. A noticeable shift had occurred after Pepper stormed his office the following day, reading him the riot act. A career's worth of everything he touched turning to gold hadn’t prepared him for failure on this kind of scale. He’d probably taken advice from a malpractice lawyer too, because his responses were far more measured and cagey. Frankly, Pepper couldn’t care less about Dr Strange’s forays into personal growth. Tony was her priority, and her considerations began and ended where his welfare was concerned.

Bruce continued to float around, haggard and racked with guilt, translating Strange’s barrage of medical jargon and the politely restrained, but ultimately vicious disagreements he had with Cho and other surgical consults.

Helen Cho was an enigma. She was difficult to gauge, only really coming alive when she talked about her work. Otherwise she was a closed door. Bruce seemed fairly enamored with her, at least on a professional basis. He treated her with a careful respectfulness clearly intended to balance out Strange’s lack of social graces. Ultimately, she ended up disappointing Tony’s ivory tower expectations. Cho declared from the start that she was willing to join the project as a consultant, but that waving a magic wand to undo Tony’s existing condition lay far outside the realms of feasibility. She was a geneticist by trade and, even with SI’s out-of-the-blue-funding, still a good ten years away from even the prospect of in-vivo studies. What Tony needed now just couldn’t be done with today’s science.

So here they all were a week on, gathering around Tony's bedside again. Strange gripped the treatment proposal in his hands as though it were his own death warrant. Bruce hovered nervously behind him. Pepper knew what they were about to say before it was verbalized. She felt more than a little sick.

Strange had the grace to hesitate. In some unprecedented nod to pleasantry, he actually opened with an “How are you feeling today, Mr Stark?” His tone was uncharacteristically gentle.

“I’m keeping afloat,” Tony said sluggishly. It was only two weeks since the surgery, but it had set him back months of progress. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

“From a neuralgia point of view things aren’t settling, as I’m sure you’re well aware. I’ve consulted with several leading specialists in my field, as well as Dr Cho and, ah…” Strange gave a passing reluctant glance at Bruce. “Others.”

“Get to the point,” Tony said. He didn’t seem particularly interested in Strange’s preemptive attempts to spread the blame as widely as possible for whatever unpalatable suggestion he was about to bring forth.

“The consensus is, unanimously in fact, that we have no other option but to operate again. The procedure will be kept as minimally invasive as possible, but at this stage your options are either to intervene or do nothing. The latter means chronic pain, possibly on a permanent basis.”

“For what it's worth, Jarvis agrees,” Bruce added. The entire situation ate him up from the inside, he’d confessed to Pepper. He felt responsible for not doing more to dissuade Tony from consenting to the risky approach. Pepper had told him to stop blaming himself. Anyone who’d spent five minutes around Tony Stark knew that if there was a risky approach available Tony would pick it by default. Bruce could count himself among the long list of people, herself included, whom Tony had at one point hired for advice and then summarily ignored in order to go ahead and do the straight opposite.

A thick blanket of silence fell as everyone waited, tense as a bridge about to cave, for Tony’s verdict.

“Is it just me, or... it could be the special K, God knows you’ve been pumping me full of that shit... but I feel like I’m reliving a deja-vu here,” Tony said, seething. “What the fuck did you do all week? Sit in a circle and twiddle your thumbs? I hired the brightest brains on the planet, and all you’ve come up with is cutting it off?”

“Tony,” Pepper tried.

“Don’t Tony me!” His fist was balled in the sheets. “I’m not—”

“Thinking clearly.” Whatever hidden reserves of civility Strange had drawn from were depleted. He cleared his throat, cherry-picking highlights from his notes. “If you reject treatment, following scenarios are probable. One, the pain stays the same. Two, more likely, is that once we drop the IV antibiotics, you’ll be faced with a creeping infection threatening the integrity of the joint. You’d be looking at an above-the-elbow truncation. In which case all our previous work will have been for nothing, and you’re back to square one. I understand there’s a psychological component to your reluctance. But from a medical standpoint, this is your best bet. Ask your AI.”

“Maybe we could have a moment?” Pepper intervened. She feared that if Tony was pressured too much and in the wrong way he would only lash out in self-defense, and they didn’t have the privilege of wrong decisions at this point.

“I don’t want a moment,” Tony said and underneath his anger he sounded plaintive. “I want my arm.”

“Okay, that's it.” Pepper's voice cut through the resulting silence in a tone that brooked absolutely no arguments. “Everybody out.”

Strange was the first to leave, looking relieved at the reprieve. Bedside chat wasn't his strong suit at the best of times. She suspected he was more used to swooping in, lapping up accolades from effusively grateful patients. Bruce hesitated, all but wringing his hands on the spot.

“You too, Bruce,” she said firmly. She felt like she'd just kicked a puppy, but Bruce clearly wasn't in a fit state to be making any persuasive arguments. She'd talk to him later, at some point when things were less hectic and when he was less fraught. Privately, she thought that what Bruce really needed was therapy, but she couldn't make that her problem. Pepper’s hands were more than full with Tony, not to mention averting the media shitstorm that threatened to rain down on them if any of this ended up public. So far, she'd managed to keep the gossip columns off their backs with a mix of pre-recorded footage to put up on social media, but that was only a short-term solution.

She looked down at Tony, and kissed him once, briefly, on the lips.

“Tony, I love you,” she opened, holding up her hand before he could interrupt her. “So much. But if you'd gone into this with an ounce of common sense, you'd have realized how risky it was.” She spread her hands and gestured to the room around them. “And now we're here. You can't spend the rest of your life living like a recluse for the sake of hanging onto two inches of extra arm.”

Tony opened his mouth, but she cut him short. “If there was another option, we'd have found it. Stark Tower has practically been a neurosurgery convention this past week, the amount of consults we've sought. Everyone is unanimous. I'm sorry that you're in this horrible, horrible situation, but I'd rather you have the surgery now than put it off until you're half mad with pain.” She put a hand on his leg. “So I'm going to need you to suck it up and sign the damn consent form. Okay, darling?”

He sighed. “It was a high-risk gamble and I lost it. But I don’t want to keep losing it, in two-inch increments. I have cold feet, okay? What if it goes wrong again? Will we have a third get-together? A fourth?” He drew marks along the arm; elbow, biceps, shoulder. “How far up do we go? Where’s the final cut?”

Pepper took her hand in his. “Don’t think like that. Not after everything.”

“I don’t even care about the stupid robot arm anymore,” Tony said. “I just want the pain to stop.”

“I know you’ve got a boner for Star Wars,” Pepper said. “But there are other middle-of-the-road options that you can live a full life with. The important thing is getting past this.”

Tony mustered up a faint, strained smile.

“I know. Fetch me a pen, will you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>   
>  Well, that went well.
> 
> So...HOLY SHIT THE ENDGAME TRAILER. Back when we started on Walls, we never thought Tony-Lost-In-Space would become canon. I don't think we've ever been so hyped over a film trailer.
> 
> Also, we've started a new side project, "On the Beach, At Night, Alone". It's an Infinity War AU with Tony, Strange and Peter on Titan and we're having a ton of fun with it. You can find it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16923930/chapters/39762552). 
> 
> Thanks as always for the lovely comments. <3


	10. Chapter 10

In the end it came down to two-point-seven inches of arm. Weaning off the ketamine wasn’t a walk in the park, especially not for the nursing staff who’d borne the brunt of it. Tony took a detour of heavy narcotics, but the pain he experienced after the second procedure was nothing compared to at first. It was of the manageable kind.

Strange preened and trumpeted success as though this had been his plan all along. Tony played the brave boy, although he admitted to her one night, in a whispered mumble after taking his sleeping pill, that he’d contemplated sticking a loaded revolver in his mouth if he’d woken up to the aftermath of another butchery.

When the moment of moments arrived, Pepper expected a high point. She felt that, after everything, she was owed one. They’d all stand around and watch with bated breath for the prosthesis to be lifted from its transport casing and be fitted to its waiting recipient. An awed silence would descend, maybe relieved laughter or a cheer. There would be tearful smiles. Tony would turn to her, beaming, and wave at her with his new left hand.

It didn’t happen quite like that. There was no climax, no summit suddenly scaled. Pepper didn’t recall the first fitting or if she’d even been there, only that there had been several dozens afterward, each with varying degrees of success, each with their own tweaks to fix. During this time Tony's morale oscillated wildly between sky-high optimism and haggard depression. It wasn’t the blazing triumph of medicine and engineering he’d been heralding. Pepper could have seen that coming a mile off — she’d picked up the pieces after enough of his failed suit test runs over the years. Tony had a special kind of amnesia where the fine-tuning aspect of such work was concerned. Every single time he’d rush into a project with an otherworldly boyish optimism. And every single time he’d scrape his knees on the rugged pavement of reality, trying to take three steps instead of one. In the case of success, he’d simply retcon the past to match up. Teething problems? Not Tony Stark.

He handled the prosthesis in quite a similar manner. One day she came home and found him sitting in the living room, serenely zapping through pay TV. He held the remote in his left hand. That was it. The prosthesis wormed its way into their lives, another aspect of Tony’s physicality that she’d eventually get used to, just as she’d gotten used to the light in his chest, or the way his ribs felt knobbly and dented in under her fingers, or the missing teeth that she only really noticed when he threw back his head and laughed.

It felt a little anticlimactic. But she could live with that too.

* * *

"Pepper?”

Her hand paused over the doorknob of her office. She jumped, turning around on her heels.

“Bruce,” she said. “You scared the color out of me.”

Bruce chewed hesitantly on his bottom lip and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Having given up on apologies, he had knuckled down and become obsessed with making sure the arm was just right. Pepper appreciated that, and she could very well sympathize with the fact that Tony was a little demanding in his expectations, but she also thought that Bruce had developed a martyr complex over the whole issue. He wasn’t the only one who’d had a big scare over Tony’s initial surgery, and he wasn’t the only one who was busy remedying problems. But he certainly wore it the worst, with his rumpled clothes and perpetual hang-dog expression.

“Have you got a sec?” Bruce asked in that hesitant way that made Pepper want to shake him by the shoulders.

She didn't have a second. Her diary was wall to wall meetings, every moment of her free time spent helping Tony through the latest in the relentless series of crises. On top of everything she had to look perpetually poised and put together and well rested, because the slightest hint of a crack in her facade would lead to a round of lurid tabloid gossip speculation that she was either not coping, pregnant, or both. Bruce could sit and hide in his lab and beat himself up over whatever he liked to all day long. She didn't have that privilege.

“If it’s important? I have a meeting in five.”

She pushed a media-neutral calm into her voice. She had been counting on those five minutes to just sit and stare at the art she'd paid a small fortune for, maybe get two sips of caffeine in before waking her phone from Airplane Mode.

Bruce rubbed at one eye under his glasses. “It was just... I wanted to talk to you.”

“Is Tony okay?” It was the first thought on her mind. Should she have stopped by to visit him that morning? Had his physio appointment gone badly?

Bruce grimaced as though she'd kicked him. “Tony's fine. It's not about Tony.” He hovered. “Well, not really. I don't know.”

Pepper looked at him expectantly. Inwardly she counted down from ten.

“It's just... a lot. Everything. With Tony and the arm, you know. It's getting to be a lot.”

“Yes,” Pepper agreed, glancing at the clock. Already those two sips of coffee were fading out of reach. She felt an irrational irritation as if Bruce had stolen them from her personally. She tried to look patient as she waited for him to continue.

Instead of a revelation, Bruce just sighed. “I should go,” he said, gesturing the way he’d come. “You have a meeting. You shouldn’t be late.”

“Go get some rest, Bruce,” she said with a forced smile, repeating mechanically what she told him every time they met. There was nobody telling her to go get some rest. She didn’t have anyone she could skulk up to in a corridor and ask for temporary absolution of her responsibilities.

Irked, she told Bruce that she’d catch up with him another time.

 

* * *

The sound of shattering glass caused her to jerk her head up, absorbed as she'd been in the text message tornado on her phone. There were fifty new emails to deal with, and it was barely seven in the morning.

Tony stood there in his boxers, staring down at a mess of coffee grounds and boiling water. Broken shards of cafetière lay in a heap around his bare feet.

“Couldn't you have used the coffee machine?”

“I prefer the french press,” Tony said.

“Since when?”

There wasn’t anyone who valued convenience more than Tony when it came to coffee. He was the type of person who favored having Jarvis order in if that meant less effort than standing up and pressing the buttons on the espresso machine himself.

“Stuff like this is meant to be good for—”

“Tony,” she stopped him. “I swear to God if you use the words ‘manual dexterity’ one more time…”

Everything from Tony destroying the kitchen trying to fry bacon, over him breaking the obscenely expensive vase in her office after offering to change the water for the flowers, through to him snapping the turn signal level on her car because he’d misjudged his own strength all came down to him 'practicing his manual dexterity'. Over the last few weeks, Tony had been a literal bull in a literal china shop. Pepper was starting to get fed up of sweeping up broken shards of whatever fell victim to his bionic hand.

“Then what?” Tony grinned like a little kid parading around a new toy. “Admit it. You love the upgrade.”

He wiggled his five new fingers for emphasis. They were uncannily lifelike, covered by a soft silicone which perfectly matched his skin tone. The casing for the arm had been made to incredible detail, with fingernails, and hair, and winkles at the knuckles in just the right places. Somehow that made it more, not less, unnerving.

Pepper pulled away.

“Does it gross you out?” Tony asked, swiveling from self-assured to self-conscious. “More than the stump?”

“I got used to the stump. It didn't bother me. This is new. It's an adjustment.” Pepper gestured to the broken glass on the floor. “For both of us.”

“I can't tell you what it's like though, Pep. Having a hand again, after all this time? I mean, sure, it's not the real thing. The fine motor control isn't there yet, but it can be. It's all just tweaks from here on out.”

“It is pretty amazing,” Pepper said because that was what he needed to hear.

“And marketable!” Tony added excitedly. “Aren’t you happy? I'm finally earning my keep again.”

“I'm happy as long as you're happy, Tony. The fact that we can launch a new product range from this is just a bonus.”

“I love it when you talk product lines, babe,” Tony said with a purr to his voice, putting a prosthetic hand on her ass. It felt cold and solid as he hooked a silicone thumb under the waistband of her pajama bottoms. She jumped back indignantly, earning her a laugh from Tony.

“Baby steps with that thing,” she warned him. “Until you can use a cafetière without destroying it, it's not going near anything else.”

“I could probably make a vibrating version,” he quipped. “Optional upgrade. Bet it would sell pretty well.”

“And this conversation is over,” said Pepper. “I have to get ready. I have a nine o'clock with the board.”

“Be sure to tell them my idea!” Tony called after her.

“I'll be sure to not,” Pepper said over her shoulder. “Clean your morning coffee up off the floor. It’ll be good for your manual dexterity.”

* * *

The 2017 Stark Expo was a living, breathing monument to tackiness. People wanted to see the old Tony, inventor Tony, entrepreneur Tony. Pepper made sure to ram exactly that image down their throats. She had them distracted with pyrotechnics and Victoria’s Secret models in skimpy bikinis and plastic robot arms. There was shiny new tech and memorable slogans. The James Rhodes foundation wheeled out veterans with lost limbs, giving reporters plenty of camera fodder of emotional sobs and grateful thanks at the possibility of a second chance. Pepper hired an escort to play a hysterical fan and flash her tits at Tony on the red carpet. She planted hecklers Tony could get back to with rehearsed witty comebacks. By all appearances Tony still had his edge. People didn’t notice him warding off everything Iron Man related, or how his flesh-and-blood hand trembled like a leaf at the roar of crowds.

For the first time since the Chitauri invasion, someone had the guts to address alien technology in another context than death and destruction. A good chunk of the entertainment rides were based on Tony’s screen-revised time in space, and the big reveal came in form of an announcement that NASA and Stark Industries would liaise for future projects. It was the most public gut punch Tony could deliver to Nick Fury and SHIELD, who were continuously procrastinating their six-month loan on the ship.

Stephen Strange was just as at home as Tony was on the receiving end of accolades. Even though he pretended to be too classy for the ring girls, he certainly lapped up the cheering crowds like a cat with a bowl of cream.

“I like you, Virginia,” he told her over a glass of expensive scotch one night. They were sat in a private bar, where Pepper and a few of her closest friends — read: shareholders — were letting yet another successful Expo day end with a cocktail or two. Tony had retired early, reaching the limit of his ability to dance for the organ grinders.

“I don't like many people,” Strange said. His cheeks were slightly flushed, his speech slower, albeit every word still carefully annunciated. This was Stephen Strange drunk.

“I thought you were just another bedtime candy for him, sleeping your way to the top.” Strange slipped a long, sinewy arm around her waist. “But you’re more than that, aren’t you? Well, obviously. Must be tough, taking care of him, huh?” He paused just long enough to bring the glass up to his pale lips. “Although I suppose it would look bad if you didn’t.”

Pepper smiled politely, disentangled herself from Strange’s slightly sweaty grip and excused herself.

It was one of the rare times she missed Tony’s possessive behavior. She would have given the world to see Stephen Strange french-kissed by his own creation as Tony handed him his ass for hitting on his girlfriend. It would have been a crass display of manual dexterity.

* * *

It was one of those rare, perfect days, the kind where her schedule was wide open for an entire precious afternoon, and where Tony felt a joie de vivre that came to him in more frequent bursts nowadays. They had a late lunch with pancetta and roasted chicken. Pepper ordered a full-bodied Claret which was too good not to share. Tony charmed her into pouring him a glass, even though he was supposed to be teetotal.

Right now she was up against the living room wall, the taste of wine on Tony’s lips, Pepper’s legs wrapped around his waist.

“Sure couldn't do this before,” Tony grunted as he held her, hands cupped under her ass. He took an awful lot of joy in pointing out, frequently, all the things he hadn’t been able to do one-handed.

He lifted her clean up, staggering a little under her weight. They made it as far as the couch before Tony set her down none too gently. Her dress was hitched up around her waist, his shirt half undone. They were both flushed and a little breathless. Tony leaned over her for a kiss, his left hand traveling up her thigh. It felt unsettlingly cold.

“Take it off,” she whispered.

“Whoa, there.” Tony laughed, pulling his shirt over his head. “All right, all right. Steady on, princess.” He reached for the button on his pants, but Pepper stopped him.

“No, Tony. Take _it_ off.”

Tony’s face fell like a ton of bricks.

“Please.”

He gulped. “Sure, yeah. Of course.”

He fumbled for a small flesh-colored button that was hidden, flush with the prosthetic arm. It was invisible at a glance, located below the thin line where silicone met skin. When he pressed it, there was a click and a mechanical whir. Pepper looked guiltily away as he pulled it off and set it down on the coffee table.

They fucked missionary style on the couch. Pepper couldn't stop glancing at the disembodied hand across her eye-line. In the end, she had to fake it.

* * *

“Great, perfect.”

She hit HOLD and put down the phone. As far as vlogs went, this would be a chart topper. People loved seeing Tony working away, playing up the maverick inventor image. It surely didn’t hurt Tony’s ego, and as a bonus, it didn’t hurt the company either. It put the audience on edge, wondering when the man who’d miniaturized an arc reactor in an Afghani cave would pull his next trick out of the hat. Even though they could coast the prosthetics line for another while, it never hurt to whet the public’s appetite for The Next Big Thing.

“I’ll have PR stick this on Twitter tonight,” she said, already forwarding the video.

“Ace,” said Tony, taking off his clunky welding goggles. “Read me out the replies. But only the ones praising my outlandish good looks.”

Pepper snorted. “I’ll save you the highlights.”

“Say,” asked Tony as he put away the soldering iron he’d been tinkering with for show. “Have you seen Bruce? He was supposed to buck up for diagnostics on the new interface, but he’s been a no-show.”

Pepper, who was already calculating whether she could get back to the office before a midday Skype call to China, said, “Why don’t you call him?”

“Voicemail.”

“That’s not like him at all.”

Ever since the surgery incident, Bruce had kept his phone practically glued to his person. He never missed a call.

Tony shrugged. “I guess I’ll start without him.” He kissed her on the lips. “Go. Dazzle investors, or bust balls, or do whatever it is you do while I’m sat around in my sweatpants.”

* * *

"I am not speaking at a neurosurgery conference. I am especially not doing a double act with Stephen Suck Up Strange.”

Pepper rolled her eyes, but her tone was imploring. “One more public appearance. Just one more, and then you can part ways with the guy for good.”

Strange had a love of the spotlight. He also had excellent lawyers. He’d positioned himself as the savior of modern neuroprosthetics, hauling himself into the international conversation via Tony Stark’s media coat tails. Conversely, Strange by proxy added an old-world intellectual gravitas to the whole undertaking and made Tony look like a serious scientist again, instead of a one-armed has-been playboy who’d taken a fancy to applied astronomy. It was in both their interests to paint this as a working partnership.

“Make Bruce do it,” Tony said.

“Nobody's going to show up to see Bruce speak.”

She paused. As unkind an argument as it was, it was the naked truth. Bruce was a brilliant scientist, but he was a social hermit. She tried to remember when she’d seen him recently but drew a blank. A few weeks ago, maybe.

She eyed Tony. “The other day. Did you find him?”

“No. He sacked it off. Can you believe that?”

Pepper couldn’t, which was why she took Tony down three levels to knock on Bruce’s door and talk it out.

Bruce had left the door to his room ajar. The bed was neatly made. The wardrobe was full of ironed clothes. His phone, switched off, lay face down on the bedside table. Tony made Jarvis trawl through security footage, who confirmed that Bruce had left eight days previously. He hadn’t been back on the premises since.

“Shit,” said Tony.

Pepper shook her head.

“If he’d gone Code Green,” Tony said, “we’d have heard about it by now, right?”

But this wasn’t on the Hulk. Pepper pulled out her phone and opened the inbox. She searched Bruce’s name until an unread email in a sea of unread emails popped up. It was dated two weeks ago.

It was a resignation letter.

* * *

Tony began spending more time with Happy Hogan, mainly in the boxing ring. Tony lamented the increase in cardio while Happy complained, good-naturedly, that it was unfair to match him up against a cyborg. Then Tony threatened to get a repulsor beam fitted to his arm, which he’d promptly decided was an idea worth sketching out schematics for all over the tablecloth at dinner that night. Which wouldn’t have been so bad in itself, except that dinner took place at a fairly exclusive Japanese restaurant.

She feared they’d get red-carded from the establishment, but the staff loved it. They wanted Tony to sign the tablecloth so they could frame it, but Tony insisted it was delicate intellectual property and he needed to take it home. But he compensated by being gregarious and indulgent, posing for selfies and signing autographs while Pepper sat patiently and sipped her sake.

Tony was on a bit of a charm offensive. She wondered if Bruce's departure had left him feeling insecure, if that recent and latest abandonment was giving way to a renewed need for adoration. Tony had gone from eschewing public appearances wherever possible to going out of his way to make himself noticed. It was great PR. Pepper just wasn't sure if it was coming from a healthy place.

That night, lying side by side in bed, he spoke into the darkness and out of the blue. “We're a good team, you know. Stark and Potts.”

“The best,” she told him. She squeezed his real hand. She always lay to his right now. There was an expectant pause. Pepper nuzzled her head against his shoulder.

“I'm not going anywhere. You know that, right?”

“Of course you're not,” Tony said, and even though she couldn’t see him in the dark, she knew he was smirking. “Why would you? I'm awesome.”

* * *

When it rained, it poured. As soon as one thing went right, another mess cropped up that Pepper had to deal with.

This time, it was SHIELD threatening to get a subpoena to force Tony to appear before a closed-doors hearing unless he was willing to cooperate with them on the matter of the ship. They'd swung from not wanting him anywhere near the thing to practically breaking down the front door of Stark Tower trying to get him to go. Which probably meant that Tony had been right in his initial blasé assessment that their scientists were idiots — i.e. not Tony — and wouldn't be able to make head or tail of anything without his help.

Tony, either oblivious or not caring about this latest development, was engrossed in trying to make a midnight snack in the form of buttering toast with his new hand. It was going well as long as one ignored the mounting mess of crumbs on the kitchen work surface, which Pepper was doing a lousy job at, knowing who would likely clean up in the end.

To top it all off there were matters even more pressing than Tony’s still malfunctioning bionic arm or the threatening lawsuit at their front door. Pepper groaned as she checked her calendar for tomorrow.

Tony looked up from his deep concentration. “Crap day in the making?”

“Just a meeting with someone I really could do without seeing.”

“Anyone I know?”

“Sort of? Maybe. Aldrich Killian.”

Tony paused, thinking. “Doesn't ring a bell. What's his deal?”

“Limb regeneration,” Pepper said. “Among other things. He's got a pitch for us tomorrow. Given everything.” She waved her hand. “It seemed worth a listen.”

“But?”

“But nothing. He's just kind of...” She made a face. “While you were missing, he got really intense over wanting to collaborate with the company. With me, specifically. He's a bit full on.”

She wasn’t sure what she hoped to achieve by laying it out like that. Whatever it was, Tony didn’t take the bait.

“Aw, for fuck's sake!” he said, having distractedly returned to his snack masterpiece. “It's the thumb. There's a few milliseconds delay between the responsiveness of the thumb joint and the rest of the fingers. It throws my knife game off. That's why I keep fucking up the toast.” He held his jam-covered fingers up, wiggling them one by one. “I'll tweak it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Pepper asked, smiling tiredly. They both knew that wasn’t true.

“Yeah,” admitted Tony, giving her a resigned grin. “You’re right, aren’t you? Don't wait up for me, babe.”

* * *

She was ten minutes late for her ten-thirty meeting with Killian, having spent the last half hour sat in a toilet cubicle psyching herself up for his bullshit. She wore pants and a high necked blouse just for this occasion, and she was sure he'd still find a way of trying to stare down it while pretending to be sensitive and respectful.

There were nice guys, and then there were Nice Guys. Aldrich Killian fell firmly into the latter category. In a just world women would be able to tell guys like Killian off without fear of reprisal. In this world, CEO or not, Pepper had to smile politely and put up with him. Especially if it meant a possible avenue of treatment for Tony.

She took a deep breath, opened the door and saw Killian, all milk bottle glasses and greasy hair, sitting at the far-off side of the mahogany desk.

“You’re sure?” Killian was saying, talking to whoever was sitting in Pepper’s leather office chair. The chair was turned with the seatback to her, but it swiveled around the moment the glass doors behind her swerved shut. Tony sat there, legs crossed, wearing his grey Armani suit as cocksure as the faux-regretful smile he had plastered on his lips.

“Absolutely certain,” Tony said, politely, but with a firm edge to it.

“But…” Killian looked desperately in Pepper’s direction. She avoided eye contact.

“I fear it’s just not a good fit for Stark Industries,” Tony continued, steering crooked-toothed Killian towards the door. “But we wish you good luck in all your future endeavors, regardless.”

The whole thing happened so quickly that by the time Tony turned around, grimacing comically, she was at a complete loss of words.

“So that’s taken care of,” he announced.

Pepper looked from the door to Tony and back, to where behind the glass panels Killian was being escorted by a secretary to the exit.

“What was that about?” she asked. She hadn’t decided whether to be relieved or upset yet.

Tony tapped a finger to his temple. “I listened. Yesterday. He creeps you out. I took care of it.”

“Oh, Tony.” She shook her head. “He’s—”

“An ass? Don’t worry, I was well-mannered.”

Pepper bit her bottom lip. “He’s one of the only people with promising leads in limb regeneration research.”

“And he’ll need that if he bothers you again,” Tony said. He slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her on the temple. “I’m back in the game, babe. You don’t have to handle it all on your own anymore.” He grinned in his dorkishly unique way. “I can butter up my own toast again. Means I can help you out with yours as well.”

“Your metaphors are the worst, Tony,” she said and laughed, now in relief instead of upset. She slipped her hand in his and for once didn’t mind it was the artificial one.

Tony pointed to the abstract clock on the wall. “Now that I freed up the rest of your morning, how about instead of fending off Revenge of the Nerds, you get to come and have pancakes with me at the diner across the street? And after that,” he told her, already pulling her towards the door. “We can talk about going home.”

“It’s barely midday, Tony,” Pepper said. “If you want a working contract, you’ll have to commit to longer hours than just before second breakfast.”

“Not the after-work kind of home,” Tony said as they took the elevator down to ground level. “I want to go _home_ , Pep. To Malibu.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, Tony's got his new arm and nobody is dead so...overall win?
> 
>  
> 
> [And meanwhile, the Stark Expo goes on.](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/10/10.mp3)


	11. Chapter 11

Steve had never heard of Latvia before 1943, a speck of land the geography books in school had overlooked. He learned that, not only was it a country, it had been under German occupation since the war had broken out. Incidentally, it was also his next SSI sanctioned mission destination.

Peggy had cultivated a contact within the Latvian resistance. Some Red Army fellow on the ground, helping recruit and arm the locals. Steve never understood just how she got hold of her intel. He’d learned early on simply not to question their origins. In another century, historians would claim that World War II had been won with British intelligence, American steel and Soviet blood. Clearly, they must have thought of a certain British intelligence officer while coming up with that statement.

Peggy wanted to arrange a covert supply drop of weapons and kit for the rebel fighters.

The mission was straight: in, out, don’t get caught. Steve was essentially a one-man battalion, perfect for the job. This, not selling war bonds, had been what Erskine had envisioned when he’d created the serum. It was what Steve had signed up for. A purpose. A vocation.

What he hadn't signed up for was Howard Stark and all that came with him.

“I'll do drop-off,” Howard offered after no volunteers could be found for piloting. “A little trip to Riga? Got nothing better planned for the weekend.”

Looking back on it, the way he’d sometimes behaved around Howard had ranged from all kinds of giddy to plain embarrassing. Howard had grown up on the east side, his father a vendor, his mother a seamstress. He was the personified American Dream, living a life of fire, even during the war. For Steve, who’d left school to help his ill mother pay rent, he was also a guiding principle on how to deal with the baggage that came with overnight fame. Peggy once said he was a man Steve could learn from a lot, although she’d probably never had the specifics in mind that came to happen eventually.

Covert ops in the dead of the night. Secret missions. Days spent in the ditches, always one step away from Death’s door. That united. Connected. Like stickum. They never named it, and it never left the bedroom. For the time and place, what they had was more than most people of Steve’s persuasion got.

Peggy would eventually figure it out. It was hard to keep secrets from her. After she'd sussed it out, Peggy was a lot lighter, like the confirmation allowed her to let go of whatever she'd been harboring towards him. Their friendship went from strength to strength.

But then Steve had crashed his plane into the ice and the rest was history. Howard married and fathered a son, and Peggy lived a life of meaning before she passed away. As for Steve, he woke up eventually…woke up to ghosts and memories and nothing left of his former life.

Consequently, Steve had never gotten to see very much of Krāslava the first time around. He found, the better part of a century later, that it was pleasant and postcard pretty, but hardly a tourist hot-spot. The beard helped with not being recognized, but it didn't do much to stop him from standing out as conspicuously foreign. He found a guest house to stay in under a fake identity. He never thought he'd be grateful for a language barrier, but the landlady's inability to speak more than a few words of English stopped her from peppering him with too many questions about the circumstances of his trip.

He lay down on the single bed and took out his phone, joining the WiFi. It always surprised him how even these picturesque little chocolate-box places had all the trappings of modern technology. He wished, often, that Howard were still around to marvel over it with. Admittedly, he would have seen the dawn of more technological advances over his lifetime than Steve had, but even Howard Stark had missed this seemingly miraculous boom of portable, unfathomably sophisticated connectivity.

What would Howard have made of Tony's whole Iron Man persona, of everything that came after? It was impossible to picture him as a father, let alone the father of a grown man. The thought was more jarring even than seeing Peggy in her twilight years in that hospital bed, withering away to old age. Steve was glad they’d let him visit her, even if she’d struggled to stay in the here and now. Maybe he ought to be glad that he'd been spared the unspeakable, the pain of seeing a mind as brilliant as Howard's being taken by the ravages of senile dementia.

Or maybe not. Maybe Howard would have stayed sharp until the end. What would a last-words scenario have looked like? Would they sit and talk about Latvian cornfields? Would Howard put a hand on Steve’s shoulder when they were done laughing and mourning and, suddenly serious, tell him to keep an eye on that wayward son of his?

Not that Steve needed any more prompting to keep an eye on Tony. His latest discovery and newfound obsession was a website called Twitter. People posted short bulletins for the public to read, and Tony was both active and popular. He’d been posting updates and videos about his surgery and recovery, harnessing hundreds of comments from dedicated followers and so called ‘antis’ alike. He seemed to be doing well, although Steve found it difficult to marry up the image of his online persona with that of the man he’d seen at Natasha’s memorial. Tony had behaved appallingly, that much was not up for dispute. It hadn't been his usual brash attitude, though. It had been the kind of act that made you more uncomfortable than annoyed, because it was a glaring sign that something was badly wrong.

As much as there was no love lost between them, Steve didn't find pleasure in the thought that Tony spiraled. But on the other hand, what could he do about it? Especially from a bed and breakfast in Krāslava? Besides, Tony had people around him. He had Pepper, Bruce, all the doctors that money could buy, and the adoration of the public. To boot, his comeback had resulted in a huge boost in Stark Industries’ profit margins. If anything, Steve was the one who'd come out of it all with nobody in his corner.

But that was all right too. All of it would be worth it if he could just track down the truth about Bucky.

* * *

He crossed the border from Latvia into Belarus in the dead of night. It was moonless and clouding up, and as he let go of the wagon’s maintenance ladder, he couldn’t help but think back on ‘44. Jumping off trains always made him feel nostalgic about the old days and the Howling Commandos and Bucky.

He landed nimbly in the chaparral, breaking his momentum with a roll. It was the Captain America way of disembarking, and it spared him the hassle of visas and border guards. International espionage wasn’t exactly Doctors Without Borders, and no head of state liked to have American superheroes sneaking around in their backyard on a personal vendetta.

The dossier had made reference to two facilities. The dead, cleared-out one in Kosvinsky Mountain Range, and another satellite outpost buried deep in a forest thirty miles south-west of Koptyush, the next point on Steve's itinerary.

Having near indefatigable reserves of energy was equally a blessing and a curse. The reduced need for rest meant that he could be constantly on the move if he kept his body supplied with enough fuel, but this heightened physical capacity often came at the expense of a worn-out mind. It was a feeling he would never get used to, being mentally exhausted while physically brimming over with endurance. Koptyush was only a couple hundred miles away. He would run through the soles of his boots before he’d run out of breath.

He stuck to woodlands and marshes, staying well clear of the lamplights of civilization. There were no roads to spot cars on where Steve walked, but he made sure to keep his speed in check whenever settlements were nearby.

The first thing he noticed about the Koptyush remains was the entry point. Leaves and boughs lay disturbed on the soil. There were footsteps in the dirt, as fresh as two weeks ago, when the last rain had fallen. Bigger branches were cleared from the entrance. Steve unholstered the Glock, but willed himself to be reserved in his assumptions. For all he knew this could be a children’s hideout, pubescent boys smoking and leafing through an overused, sticky Playboy magazine.

Steve pulled out a pen torch. The antechamber housed a hatch, metal rungs leading down into the darkness. The light of his SureFire didn’t reach the bottom. He knelt, knees popping. There were smudges in the layer of dust covering the rungs and side rails. He descended, slow and quiet, in the cover of darkness. The bowel of the bunker was a labyrinth of corridors and dead ends. He used the flashlight in hopes of tracking his predecessor, but the imprints were as aimless as his own. At least he seemed to be dealing with a lone individual; form and size were consistent throughout.

It took him half an hour to ferret out the guy. A room, stacked from top to bottom with monitors and control panels of a century past. Among them the clacking sound of typing and the quiet hum of working machinery. A silhouette of a man came into view, hunched over a laptop screen, cables snaking from his device like the roots of a tree. He was surrounded by discarded cereal bar wrappers and empty water bottles. A rumpled sleeping bag lay on a makeshift cot in the corner. So he’d been camping out for a while.

“Don’t run,” Steve said and stepped out of the shadows. He’d put the pistol back in its holster. What he wanted were answers, not the mystery guy bolting the minute he realized he not only wasn’t alone, but threatened with a weapon.

The typing subsided instantly. The man turned around, tense and slow.

This time it was Steve’s turn to look startled.

“What on Earth are _you_ doing here?”

Bruce Banner blinked over the top of his wire rimmed spectacles.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

* * *

Steve Rogers, who had absolutely no business being here, looked like crap. No, that was rather an unkind impulse judgment. Steve looked like the Captain America version of crap, which was everyone else on their best day.

“It’s… good to see you,” Steve said, but clearly meant it in more of an I’m-glad-you’re-not-someone-I-have-to-kill way rather than let’s-go-for-coffee-and-catch-up.

“How did you find this place?” Bruce asked.

“You first. I thought you were— weren’t you working with Tony?”

Bruce winced. “Yes. No. It’s complicated. I resigned.” He pointed to the laptop. “Mostly because of this.”

Steve eyed the computer warily. If he had uncovered even half of what Bruce had found, it wasn’t surprising for his default state to be to trust nobody. Bruce didn’t have quite the same qualms in Steve’s case. Steve had his faults, many and glaring, but he was far too idealistic to be mixed up in this from the wrong side.

“I’ll need a few more details than that,” said Steve and also gestured to the laptop.

“Natasha. Obviously we’re here because of her.”

“Natasha? Romanoff?” Steve echoed, confused. Didn’t count on that answer, then.

Bruce paused, reassessing his options. “Why are you here then? SHIELD?”

“I— no. Not SHIELD. I mean, Fury knows I’m away, but he doesn’t— this is personal. Why? Are you…?”

“No, absolutely not.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

They fell back into silence. Steve offered a smile and Bruce returned it as a gesture of good faith. Then he told him about Natasha’s letter and the abandoned Barton family farm, about how he’d picked up the thread where she had left off, and how he’d been tracing abandoned bases from the Cold War, pulling what he could from what was left on the hard drives. It was a very abbreviated summary of his month-long road trip behind the former Iron Curtain.

Steve stared at him for a long moment, from his laptop to the mountains of dated equipment surrounding him, his expression blank. Then he broke out in laughter and said, “Hydra? Christ, Bruce, they’ve been shut down since World War II. You’re chasing ghosts.”

 _If only you knew_ , thought Bruce, “And you? What are you looking for here, if not Hydra?”

Steve stopped laughing. His expression became joyless. “I guess I’m chasing ghosts.”

And so Bruce learned about James Buchanan Barnes and the Zimniy Soldat program, about how Steve’s spot on Tony’s rescue team had been bought with nothing short of extortion. He wasn’t too startled to hear the latter; blackmail was Nick Fury’s modus operandi. If anything, Bruce would have been surprised to find he was the only victim of Fury’s racketeering. He knew for a fact that SHIELD kept rattling at Tony’s cage. Why then should Captain America be spared from it all?

There was something else though, a connecting piece that had brought them both here.

“But it was Natasha who tipped you off about it? About the program?”

Steve nodded, mulling it over. Bruce contemplated helping him along, but he seemed to catch on all by himself.

“In 2014, yes. The notes she left you go back to when?”

“Just after the war.”

“She was gone. Off-grid. For almost a year. Do you think…?”

“I don’t know what to think about Natasha Romanoff, Steve. I thought I did once, but I was quite wrong.”

* * *

Eight hours and three meal replacement bars later Steve had taken a nap on the folding bed, and woke up to find Bruce in the same position he’d left him in: hunched over his laptop. The data transmission was slow, the systems old, too much was corrupted. At least that was what Bruce said, although he rambled on at length in what might as well have been another language for all Steve took in. He stood by, watching the man and the blinking screen, commiserating with the odd frustrated sigh whenever the worry lines on Bruce’s face deepened further.

Gradually, they established an outline. Hydra hadn’t died with the Red Skull, although Bruce couldn’t say if they were an active threat or not. It very much went against Fury’s rain-or-shine guarantee of “Hydra? Why, we put them out like washing on a line! Don't worry your head about it, Cap.” That had been the first thing Steve had asked for confirmation on his debrief after he woke up and now here Bruce was, plunging him back into the past like it was a torrential, icy river that had always been waiting to claim him.

“And you’re sure?” he asked for the umpteenth time.

Bruce was unusually decisive. “Yes. Nat was thorough, beautifully thorough.”

“One thing I don't get though... why'd she leave all this intel to you? Why not Barton? Or me?”

Bruce looked torn. “I thought about this a lot. You, for now obvious reasons. If your friend is in any way involved, you would have been an incalculable risk, and Natasha wasn’t a risk taker. Clint, I’m not sure. Maybe she wanted to protect him, keep him out of all of this. Maybe she wanted someone on it who doesn't need to ask SHIELD's permission to take a shit. Or maybe I was the only person she could think of whose idea of a good time is sitting around in damp bunkers trying to pull slivers of data out of corrupted computer terminals.”

“I could think of one other person who might get a kick out of computer science.”

“If you mean Tony, he was a little indisposed when she wrote her testament. And I’d rather not involve him in this, if you don’t mind. He’s got other fish to fry.”

Steve snorted. “I see him in the media a lot.” He pantomimed a phone. “The video diary thing? He’s trending.”

“He’s got good PR,” clarified Bruce. “But let’s leave Tony out of this, okay? This is the first time in a while that my life’s not been orbiting around anything Stark.”

Steve let it drop. “You got a next move lined up from here?”

“Apart from renting a room with an actual bed? No, not really. I was hoping that I’d find my next clue here, but this seems to be a dead end. I’ll go over what files I managed to extract, see if there’s anything I missed, but I don’t have my hopes up. The last place I went, in Ukraine, I pulled a partially corrupted dataset that made reference to a base in Siberia, but I couldn’t get coordinates for it. If this haul doesn’t yield anything useful, I’ll keep working on tracking that down.”

Steve grimaced. “Bad news then. Unless there are multiple outposts in Kosvinsky, I've already checked it out. It was a bust. Nothing but cobwebs, and old comp—” He looked from Bruce to the mess of old machines, wires and his laptop. “Oh.”

“By any chance...” Bruce said with the closest thing Steve had ever seen to excitement on his face. “...could you take me there?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, dear readers. 
> 
> And while Bruce has been hiding out in Belarusian bunkers, Steve has been [stalking Tony on twitter.](http://chaedandspacelaska.com/11/11.jpg)
> 
> Totally healthy hobby.
> 
> All comments are greatly appreciated.


	12. Chapter 12

Tony pulled up through the Malibu front gates one year and two months after he had stepped foot back on Earth... which was about one year too late if you asked Tony. This wasn’t to say that New York wasn’t okay. New York was O-K-A-Y. But that was it. The tower had Tony’s name on the side, but Tony had never built up an emotional connection to it. It had still been a building lot when Loki had hurled him out of what was planned to become the living room of his and Pepper’s private suite. Tony hadn’t even been too aggrieved to find that, in his absence, Pepper had scrapped the living room idea. She’d remodeled it into a home office. 

Despite Stark on the outside, New York was Potts to the core — including, morbidly, the name on the lease. Call that a kick in the balls.

Malibu was different though. Malibu was all Tony. He’d built it back in ‘92 after putting his parents in the ground. He hadn’t wanted to spend the rest of his life in the inherited manor in Manhattan, where all he’d have to stare at would be his mother’s baby grand and Howard’s liquor cabinet. Secretly he’d been afraid that Howard’s ghost would haunt him there like something out of a B-grade horror flick, because Howard was that level of an asshole, even post hum.

So Tony had taken the  _ Go West, Young Man _ maxim to heart, found an overpriced cliff side on the California coastline and shoved enough money at architects and contractors to birth his new sanctuary. Towering proudly upon its rocky foundation, Malibu was the perfect place to live out all of his unhealthy coping mechanisms. Tony 2.0, running on most forms of ethanol and all silicone tit sizes of Silicone Valley.

Hell of a time.

He liked to say his life had taken an upward swing once he’d employed Pepper as PA, but the truth was far less syrupy. He hadn’t shat a fuck about who read him his schedule at the time. All the pet names he’d come up with for his assistants over the years were nothing but excuses not to remember their real ones. Pepper pulled clear of the competition only because she had the prettiest legs of them all; that had the essence of Tony’s interest in his PA in the beginning.

But this wasn’t a Pepper Potts origin story. This was about Tony. And if it was sleazily egocentric, well, tough luck. A certain amount of egotism was mandatory for survival, and if he’d proven anything in his life to date, it was that Tony Stark was one goddamned survivor. 

He hadn’t been the one to walk out of Club Cave because he was altruistic — Ho Yinsen had been altruistic, and he’d been rewarded for his Christian charity with a clip of Stark branded 9mm to the gut. Spin the bottle. James Rhodes, selfless humanitarian. Netted him a tentacle around the throat with his eyeballs popping right out of their sockets. Golden deal, no? If the world were to know about the nitty-gritty of Tony’s hook-ups with the Guy With The Scythe, his critics might be inclined to scrape ‘philanthropist’ off the attributes list. No, benevolence and magnanimity scored you a front-seat ticket on the hell bus. Conceit and egoism were what kept you in the game. Closing a portal in someone’s face was the sure formula for success.

But anyway. Malibu.

Malibu, although not apparent for the wider public, had been the cradle of something far greater than just pesky STDs. Dump your mother six feet under and ship her  _ Bösendorfer _ piano (an authentic Viennese classic) across the country, boy, that gets the creative juices flowing. Enter Jarvis, a marvel of artificial intelligence, unrivaled to this very day. For a long time he’d been Tony’s metaphoric life line — in the last five years, Tony’s literal life support system. Malibu was Jarvis’ birthplace. Malibu was home.

Pepper pulled the S7 up in front of the main entrance. He had wanted to drive, but she hadn’t let him. ‘Too excited’ was the diagnosis, a hefty symptomatology of giddiness and runaway attention spans. 

He got out of the car before Pepper had a chance to even turn the engine off. He was overcome by a flood of emotions that were hard to rein in. Gone were the days where his only concerns were whether he was pissing enough to refiltrate, or how much slush dessert he could afford to skip. Today, Tony’s thoughts were nothing of that ilk. They ranged from ‘I’ll finally sleep in my bed again!’ to a bubbling unease if he thought of the basement stairs, winding down and down and down to where Mark I through VI stood waiting for him with gold-titanium sneers on their faces.

Despite assuring his adoring fans that he was only moments away from dusting off Iron Man for a grand return, Tony didn’t have the slightest ambition of climbing back into a suit any time soon. He’d spent four years eating and sleeping and shitting in one. He was in dire need of a relationship break. Pepper didn’t mind much — despite the Iron Man’s Number One Fan line he trotted out for the press, he knew she was far from it — but it was honestly Jarvis’ lack of urge that took off the pressure. If Jarvis didn’t see the need to don the armor, it was excuse enough for Tony to soft-pedal it. Lifeline, remember? If Jarvis said ‘Jump!’ then Tony would. Until such a time, hakuna your tatas.

“What… happened here?”

He’d stepped through the doorway ready to pick up a life he’d abandoned five years ago. This was  _ not _ how he’d left things five years ago. The indoor waterfall was gone. He glimpsed chrome in the kitchen, which hadn’t been there before. The place was teeming with ugly modern art barf.

“Where’s my six-string?” Tony asked. It was Keith Richards’ 1959 Les Paul Standard, the fucking holy grail of electric guitars of its time. Tony had bought it at an auction back in 2003, dumped a mill of taxable cash to outbid some spoilt Saudi Sultan’s brat. He turned to face Pepper, who sported an expression ranging between genuinely guilty and genuinely ignorant of having committed An Unspeakable Sin.

“I donated it,” she confessed in a small voice, but that was not all. His one and favorite coffee cup was gone, the downstairs bathroom refurbished — thank God the  _ Bösendorfer _ was still in place! — but Tony nearly dropped the generic Stark Industries mug Pepper had tried to appease him with when the tour of the house reached the master bedroom.

“I couldn’t… after you were… Jim helped me revamp it.”

“It’s nice,” Tony managed to lie.

Pepper picked this up the wrong way. She inquired, a little less ruefully, “Really? Oh, I’m glad. I was worried you’d maybe not… what do you think about the curtains?”

Tony forced a smile.

“They’re great.”

They were the ugliest thing he’d ever seen, and he’d seen his fair share of ugly. They strained his eyes just looking at them. He wondered what quack designer had talked her into buying them. Had she foraged through the moldiest pile of second-hand ware at the shittiest Salvation Army store in the shadiest back alley slum of Chicago, she wouldn’t have been able to find anything this grotesque. And that was putting it nicely.

It was about the extent of nice thoughts he was capable of having towards Pepper and her defilement of his holy sanctum, because then they went into the garage at Tony’s hastening request.

 

* * *

His cars were gone. The Suzuka Grey Spyder V8 was gone, and so was the Saleen S7, and Tony’s go-to favorite, the R8. Not even the rare 1967 Shelby Cobra had been spared. He hurried like a man at the end of his proverbial rope, to the only one left and lifted up the dusty cover.

Tony exhaled in relief at the sight of the Flathead Roadster’s hot rod red finish. Pepper looked adequately guilt-ridden. She had no idea how close he was to a crying fit (best scenario) or a cardiac incident (worse, but far more likely). He learned that it was Happy Hogan who’d inadvertently prevented his impending flat-line.

“I wanted to give it away too,” Pepper admitted. “But then Happy came up to me and he took me by the hand, and I think he was crying a little when he said, ‘Miss Potts, if there’s any chance he’s out there somewhere,’ — but I wasn’t sure at that point, Tony, it was 2014, it had been two years! — ‘then don’t do this to him. Please don’t do this to him.”

Hogan, bless his soul. Tony would have combusted into a pile of star dust if he had known his 1932 Ford had ended up on Craigslist. He’d have to personally thank the man, maybe over a pint of cool blonde after a round in the ring. He’d put his damn foot in the door when it came to renegotiating the zero percent BAC rule. Tony Stark hadn’t run a victory lap around the Milky Way only to return to a life of abstinence.

He dropped the sheets back on the roadster. He’d give it a thorough check later. The rest of the garage was empty, and that satisfied Tony more than it unsettled him. It was an order carried out by Jarvis three-and-a-half years ago, aligning with Tony’s coding directives in times of emergency:  _ AWOL > 365 days = put a lock on the treasure chest. _

He inquired briefly about the bots and was happy to learn that they were stored and in standby in the Hall of Armors. The Hall of Armors had been but a concept design back in 2012, but Jarvis, dutiful as ever, had carved deeper into the cliff side and buried all of Tony’s suits two levels below the garage. He would find a moment, cut out a chunk of his schedule like Jarvis had cut a chunk from the rock, and dedicate it unreservedly to the maintenance of his bots.

But not now. Now there was one more destination to scout out. Tony marched down the stairs which led two levels deeper to the Hall of Armors, but only one level deeper to one of his most prized possessions, a long cultivated and much cherished wine cellar.

Pepper followed with all the enthusiasm of a kicked dog.

Tony fought hard against the urge to wrestle some kind of discreditable apology from her. Deep down he knew she wasn’t to blame — she’d thought him dead, after all, like the rest of the world — but Tony wasn’t able to access these deep down reserves of judiciousness and reason. The most he could attempt was to access one of the many wine bottles that were, cue a silent hallelujah, still in place.

Pepper omitted to shed light on her decision to keep the booze but sell the cars, and Tony was not much in a mood to go in pursuit of her underlying scheming. He instead moved down the aisle, past Cabernets and Rieslings and Merlots, to where in the back row rested a bottle of old, dusty Glenfiddich from the year 1931, a scarcity that valued just under a hundred grand among aficionados but held a personal value to Tony out of quite a different reason.

1931 was the year Howard Stark had conceived Stark Industries. In comparison to its multi-billion dollar value nowadays, SI had been nothing but cheap stencil writing on the glass door of a decrepit rear house one-room office in ‘31. The Stark success story hadn’t properly taken off until Hitler’s declaration of world domination and Howard’s subsequent involvement in the war. Then followed the birth of Captain America and the Manhattan Project… and by then Stark Industries had built up a reputation.

But in the beginning there hadn’t been more to Howard’s legacy than that cheap stencil writing on the glass door (with the lettering messy, not even in a straight line, Tony had seen pictures) and this one bottle of 1931 Glenfiddich, upon which Howard had scrawled  _ ENJOY THIS ON A GREAT DAY. _

Howard had never opened the bottle despite living to see many a great day, and, upon finding it as part of his heritage Tony had put it away with the intention of enjoying it either in the spirit of the message or in the event of SI’s then looming bankruptcy, so he could spite his dear old man in the worst possible kind.

He’d only ever opened the glass pane guarding the bottle twice in his life, and neither had been on A GREAT DAY, or one he’d even remotely enjoyed. Instance number one had been December 17th, 1991, the day after Howard drove himself and Maria into a street lamp. Tony had been close to uncorking the Glenfiddich then, but abstained in respect of his late mother. It was one thing to take a piss on Howard’s grave. Tony would never do such a thing to his mother.

The second case of temptation had been May 9th or 10th, 2010. He couldn’t remember when exactly he’d peaked at eighty-six percent blood toxicity on his palladium meter, but it was one of those two days. Firmly convinced of his imminent death, eighty-six percent had seemed like a feasible number to take one last, well deserved sip of exquisite single malt. He’d played with the thought of stretching things out until he hit the lower nineties, then in a flash of anxiety and pragmatism realized that once he hit the lower nineties he wouldn’t give a damn about eighty-year old whiskey. And if he did, he wouldn’t be in proper shape to enjoy it.

Only then the whole Vanko thing happened, he’d synthesized a new element, and the Glenfiddich got a few more years to age.  _ What about today? Today’s as great a day as any other _ , Tony thought delusionally optimistic, because although his cars and his Les Paul Standard were sold or donated, Tony himself was still here, with a wicked sci-fi prosthesis to boot.

But then again it wasn’t  _ that  _ great of a day, and Tony wondered when or if he’d ever encounter an appropriate situation to merit ENJOYING THIS _.  _ Maybe when he hit fifty, which wasn’t that long off anymore, or maybe when his son — should he ever have one — graduated summa cum laude from MIT like his father, and his father before him.

That was bogus, though. Baloney. It was also a clear indicator that Tony needed to wrap this up and go grab some pills from upstairs. Those skittish attention spans were getting out of hand. He’d never entertained the idea of kids, not with Howard being the kind of role model he’d been. Right now offspring ranked quite low on Tony’s priorities list. Leading the chase on that list was the tried-and-true ol’ ship debate, and cleaning the spark plugs on the Flathead Roadster, and somehow breaching the news to Pepper that he couldn’t stand to look at those abhorrent curtains in the bedroom. He wanted new ones, ASAP, ideally whatever had been there in the pre-portal era. And she better chuck the equally abhorrent matching carpet too. Jesus.

No, he thought to himself, this was definitely not the GREAT DAY Howard Stark had had in mind when he’d written out his note in ball pen on a (then) cheap bottle of scotch.

Tony put the Glenfiddich back on its rack.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Pepper's home improvements haven't gone down very well. 
> 
>  
> 
> [Meanwhile, once upon a time...](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/12/12.html)


	13. Chapter 13

Siberia in fall was worlds apart from Siberia in summer. There was a harsh, autumnal beauty to the landscape. The climate was cold and wet, with the odd patch of struggling sunshine. The temperature, having considerably dropped since Steve’s last visit, made travel easier than in the scorching heat of summer. Had he been alone, he would have chosen to go on foot; with Bruce in tow however, that stopped being a viable option.

Bruce was an odd traveling companion. He was surprisingly savvy about some things. They were stopped by a politsiya car a few miles outside of Uyar once, supposedly a routine control in which rental papers, passports and visas were requisitioned and checked, and subsequently found very much not in order. It took Bruce some twenty minutes to negotiate a bribe in broken Russian, but eventually he sent them on their way. The notion hadn’t even occurred to Steve, who was an overt opponent of all forms corruption. His own strategy would have been to knock them out and fly the coop. He grudgingly admitted that Bruce’s method was superior, if only to spare the local law enforcement a full dental overhaul. Bruce, meanwhile, lamented that he'd probably paid them too much.  
  
Having said that, for a guy who’d been on the run for so long, Bruce was a crapshoot when it came to directions. Cellphone coverage was sparse across the Siberian tundra, and they lost the GPS signal more often than they had it. Navigation had to be done the old-fashioned way, by map. Nine times out of ten, Bruce barely managed to hold it the right way up.

They started out in that stilted, overly polite way of two colleagues who were forced to work together. It wasn’t outright bad faith, more of a healthy suspicion on both sides. Their shared track record spoke of tragedy and disaster. The Chitauri in 2012, first the brutal cutback in New York, later the Hulk’s uncontrolled rampage through Santa Monica, taking nearly as terrible a toll as the invaders had. Steve had been on the ground during that one, had seen the devastation up close. He'd had his reservations about using the Hulk as a weapon from the beginning and the number of good men he'd lost that day told him he'd been right to feel uneasy. He'd once confided in Bruce that the only word he cared about on him was whether or not he could track down the tesseract. After Santa Monica though, nobody talked about Dr Bruce Banner's prowess in nuclear physics anymore. Years later, their fateful reunion would bring them aboard a ghost ship, where they buried friends and comrades in exchange to bring a dead man home. They'd parted ways after that fiasco under tight cordiality and the distinct feeling that, while there was no ill will harbored, neither man left with a particularly glowing impression of the other.

Their current journey was a long one, accentuated by periods of awkward silence and the crunch of Russian gravel road under their tires. Steve brooded and brooded, one tedious repetitive cycle. What evidence Bruce had showed him was solid, and Steve knew it was built on good foundation. If anything, he trusted Natasha not to go into something of this magnitude half-assed. There were huge question marks regarding Bucky’s involvement in all of it and why Natasha had decided to keep it concealed from SHIELD, but Steve agreed with Bruce on one thing: she wouldn’t have put a veil on it without a good reason.

Bruce had been tight lipped at first on the subject of Natasha and her safety deposit box, but it hadn't taken much prodding to get him going. Maybe it was just a more interesting topic than their fiftieth shared observation on how it was as cold as balls. Bruce claimed that he didn't know why she'd entrusted the task on him, but from the way his voice cracked when he spoke about her, it looked like he still harboured hope in one way or another. Steve thought Natasha was probably more ruthlessly pragmatic than that, but he didn't see the harm in taking a kinder outlook if it gave Bruce a sense of purpose.

What he was struggling to get his head around was the notion that Hydra was still a threat, that they hadn't eradicated it during the war but rather driven it underground, like a badger. And somehow, in some way, everything was connected to Bucky. It couldn’t be a coincidence that him and Bruce had ended up in the same bunker, at the same time, following completely different leads.

There was more to it. He was sure.

* * *

“This is it? This is… all?”  
  
Bruce whipped off his spectacles and cleaned them on the tail of his shirt. He goggled in that myopic, defenseless way that people with very poor eyesight have when their glasses are off. The disappointment in his voice was tangible.  
  
Kosvinsky was a mountain range in the northern Urals, bare of vegetation but abundant in rock and dirt. The Russian Government had built their response to the American Cheyenne Mountain Complex some hundred miles south of here, but there were more hidden treasures underneath the massive plates of granite than simple military closets.  
  
Steve heaved open the bunker doors with a stomach that was in knots. He didn’t know what to hope for. On one hand he wished it was a matter of Bruce pointing out the ON-switch he’d mistakenly overlooked, on the other he prayed for the electronics to be broken beyond repair.  Yes, he wanted answers, dearly. But he had a real bad feeling that those answers would not be the story he was looking for; the one with a happy ending.  
  
“What happened to the place?” Bruce enquired, now faintly amused. “Looks like the Other Guy went on a rampage.”

Steve looked ruefully at the site. Chairs and desks were overturned, papers lying in heaps on the floor, caked in negligent bootprints. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have accused vagrant youth of desecrating the place. Instead he let his shoulders drop and admitted, “That was me. I was… exasperated. Too many dead ends.”

Bruce squatted by one of the ransacked machines. “It will take a while to sort through it all. See what’s salvageable and what’s not.” He looked back up at Steve. “Where did you sleep? We should make camp first, some heat maybe. I have a feeling we’ll be here for some time.”

They divvied up the chores. Steve volunteered to take care of the living arrangements. While he hadn’t bothered beyond the concrete floor last time, he couldn’t exactly expect Bruce to put up with such spartan conditions. He cleared a corner, set up the two camping beds and aired out the sleeping bags. While Bruce fastened battery-powered LED lights throughout the main room, Steve powered up the little portable gas stove. It would be a backbreaker heating up the place, but if they were staying they could at least do it without having the shakes in permanent sub zero.

They had food and water reserves for two weeks, bought out of a mom-and-pop shop from the nearest village, which was just under a day’s drive away. Steve stacked them neatly along one wall. Volzhanka bottled water, bags of rice, and an assortment of Russia’s equivalent of Spam, Tushonka. Bruce had been a little thrown at the amount of provisions until Steve told him that he needed about three times the caloric amount of a healthy male to even get through the day.

"The super-strength is a nice add-on,” he admitted. “But nothing comes from nothing.”

“And if you don’t eat?”

Steve laughed, “I’ll feel real rough. And grumpy. How are you coming along?”

He’d secretly hoped for Bruce to just pull out his computer, connect a few cables from here to there, and type the magic password into a Cyrillic Hydra log-in screen. The reality was a far longer process, laborious and intensely boring. Bruce would sit unmoving for hours, scrolling endlessly through rows and rows of code that meant nothing to Steve. Occasionally he would mutter intensely to himself, mostly things that made no sense. "Nine... eight... seven... five... four..."

Mostly Steve busied himself instead with recon, but found out quickly that there wasn’t much to look out for. He didn’t understand Russian and was therefore more hindrance than help in cataloguing the analog files, and Bruce seemed to work better left alone. They’d share two meals a day, and here and there swapped a story to go along with, Steve from his childhood during the Great Depression, Bruce from his various travels.

“When you take a step back and look at it all, it’s kind of nuts, don’t you think?” Steve said. “Hydra, the program… us meeting in the middle of nowhere? I’m still surprised. This doesn’t seem like your scene at all.”

“It’s totally my scene,” Bruce said. “Why would it not be?”

Steve shrugged. He wasn’t sure why he kept pushing the issue. Morbid curiosity probably, or whatever the reason was that had him stalking Tony Stark’s Twitter account every chance he got. “Sort of seemed like you’d settled down, that’s all.”

“Sort of?” Bruce drooped his head. “Sort of not.”  
  
Steve didn’t dig. Sometimes a moment of silence was a better conversation starter than the kindest meant words. Sure enough, Bruce spoke again. “It probably started with the prosthesis? I don't know. Maybe before. Maybe on the island.”  
  
“I'm not sure I follow,” Steve said. “It looked like he was getting there. Recovering. Doing better than the last time I saw him…” He stopped. The last time he’d seen Tony had been at Natasha’s memorial.

Bruce expelled a breath in ire. “Exactly. What ends up on his social media accounts is very different from what’s actually going down. I’m probably breaking at least a dozen confidentiality clauses just by saying this out loud, but… the thing with the arm? It went really wrong. Don’t believe the hype. It was a disaster. They got this absolute dickhead of a surgeon in. He badly botched it. I wasn’t there during the initial procedure, because Strange — that’s the guy’s name — talked Tony into kicking me out of the OR. It was also the same day the thing with Nat happened and by the time I got back Pepper was beside herself and Tony was a total mess. I didn’t know what do or how to fix anything. But I kept trying harder, regardless. I spent nights awake, thinking of nothing but Tony’s arm and Nat’s letter. It was toxic. It burnt me out. I just burnt out.”

Bruce looked up from the spot he’d been focusing on between his feet. “I tried to talk to Pepper about it, but she just kept blowing me off. And then there was this one time. I’d been up all night, trying to debug code for improvements to the prosthesis. I was wrecked. I gave it to Tony next morning, but he just sort of shrugged and said, ‘Okay, cool.’ Five years, Steve. I put five years of my life on hold for this guy, and in the end all he has to say to me is ‘Okay, cool.’ I didn’t even say goodbye. I emailed my resignation to Pepper and left.”

“But now you wish you hadn't?” Steve asked. He wondered if Bruce was just angling for someone to pat him on the shoulder and tell him he'd done the right thing.  
  
“They both had a lot on their plate,” Bruce said. “In hindsight I can see that. It wasn’t personal, I don’t think. But it doesn’t make it any less hurtful. I wish it hadn’t ended the way it did.”

 _You’re not the only one who wishes that,_ Steve thought, but didn’t say so out loud. Whatever was going down between him and Tony was another story.

“My ma' had a saying,” he offered eventually. “She used to tell me, 'Stevie, you can't set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.'”

Bruce laughed wistfully. “Your mother had a point.”

“Howard, Tony’s dad, that is, used to say something similar,” Steve said. “Although his version was embroidered in a lot more profanity.”  
  
“I keep forgetting that you knew Tony's father.”.  
  
“I don't,” Steve said.

* * *

  
“Sto?” Steve held up ten fingers. The old hag shook her head. She drew her tongue over her toothless gums and began to pepper him again with a barrage of peddler’s jargon. He shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t understand,” he said, enunciating his words carefully. Not that it helped. People around here talked English as well as Steve talked Russian, which was probably why his trip to the local market was taking far longer than planned. Far more expensive too.

In the end he forked over a lot more than that lecso was worth for, but at least Granny Toothless hadn’t spit into the jar before handing a bagful to Steve. He dropped off this last purchase into the back of the jeep and checked his watch. Sunset in two hours. No way he was getting back to the bunker in time and, Captain America or not, he wasn’t too keen on having a tire blow out in the middle of nowhere, at night. It wasn’t like Bruce was going to wait up with supper; a supply run was slotted out for anything from one day to three. Steve was well within a reasonable time still.

He rented a room that he probably got shortchanged on, but the lukewarm shower made up for it and even more so the bed. Reception was spotty here, the Internet even spottier. He managed to access his mailbox which was bombarded worse than the beaches of Normandy. Of the fifty-four new emails only three came from real people: his landlord letting him know that the heating would be on and off all of next week due to repair work on the circuiting equipment. An interview inquiry by a lady from Vanity Fair which Steve forwarded to Robert Dunford from Public Relations. Part of his contract with SHIELD comprised Captain America’s media presence and the agency’s handling thereof. There had been plenty of gigs during the war and in its immediate aftermath, gradually tapering off over the years. Since Tony’s return, those reporters who couldn’t get a hold of Iron Man himself spammed Steve’s inbox full of questions. With all the secrecy surrounding the mission SHIELD didn’t want him in front of a camera anyway. They were more than content to let Tony bask in the limelight.

Which he did. Of those fifty-four emails twenty were alerts from various social networking sites Steve had subscribed to under a false identity. A lot was just advertising for the Expo at Flushing Meadows. Check out the newest rides, 4D virtual reality adventures as a digital Iron Man, all the latest spick-and-span technology that you could get, TODAY, cutting-edge and incredibly affordable, no hidden extras, no nasty surprises. There were a couple videos, but the connection was too bad for those to load. Steve tried with one, but gave up half an hour later, exasperated. He set the phone aside, closed his eyes, and dreamt of simpler times.

* * *

  
Bruce was beside himself. “Where have you _been?”_

He’d intercepted Steve outside like a deer with a death wish, ending in Steve forcing the brakes on the jeep, two of the lesco jars ending spilled on the back seats and Bruce adopting a dangerously greenish hue after having been almost run over in broad daylight.

“I was in town. What happened? Are you alright?”

The fact alone that Bruce was to be found on the surface and not underground, hooked up to all his computers, was reason enough to worry. Not even Bram Stoker’s Dracula shied daylight as much as Bruce Banner on a hacking binge.

Steve’s trip had turned from two days into five. He’d only checked that last email the very next morning and had been haplessly surprised to find it came from Fury of all people. His leave time was drawing to a close and anyway, SHIELD wanted him back before that if he could at all arrange it. The bad guys weren’t sticking to Captain America’s holiday schedule and it was soon time to end his sabbatical. Steve had called in immediately. Tough luck, the time difference. He had to sit on his ass until office time in the States, and then spent a small fortune on overseas calls of which it had taken five and a perceived eternity in the waiting loop until he had Maria Hill on the line and managed to bargain an additional three weeks of reprieve. But that was it. He’d have to understand that. Steve said he did, of course, and hung up in relief. But by then it had been too late to drive, and he’d extended his stay for another night.

Bruce hobbled from the bonnet to the passenger side and pulled open the door. “Steve, I have it. I’ve had it for two days! Of all moments you chose the worst one to dally around in town!”

“Have what? What are you talking about?”

“The key, of course!” Bruce said excitedly. “There's a whole bunker down there!” He waved a grubby, crumpled sheet of notes and scrawled calculations and passcodes at him and Steve's stomach dropped like a stone as one word stood out black against the rest. 

**ZOLA**

* * *

Желание, ржавое, семнадцать, рассвет, печь, девять, добросердечный, возвращение на родину, один, грузовой вагон.  
  
No?  
  
Try that in English.  
  
Longing, rusted, seventeen, daybreak, furnace, nine, kind hearted, homecoming, one, freight car.  
  
The journal was old, a leather bound notebook from another era. The cover was unremarkable save for the soviet star emblazoned on the front.  
  
Its contents: Программа «Зимний солдат»  
  
Programma “Zimniy Soldat”  
  
Bruce translated the gist of it, occasionally pausing to check words here and there on the dictionary of his phone. Entries reached back as far as ‘39. Zimniy Soldat was Hydra’s response to Project Rebirth. Only, unlike kindly old Abraham Erskine, Hydra had gone one step further and addressed the mental capacity problem: Google translated it as ‘hypnosis’, but what it really came down to was brainwashing. The Winter Soldiers didn’t have to deal with mental overload at all — their minds got wiped at regular intervals.  
  
“This is… frankly, this is brilliant,” said Bruce. He leafed through the book, astounded.  
  
Steve would have ripped it right out of his hands, were it not for Bruce being the only one speaking the language. “What else? What does it say? Are there any names?”  
  
“No names. There’s some extremely detailed—” He frowned. “No, nevermind. That’s hardly relevant. Oh, how about this?” He turned the journal to Steve.

“How about what? I can’t read Cyrillic, Bruce.”  
  
“There were ten,” Bruce translated. “This is from ‘46. Ten study participants. Four female, six male. Varied ethnicity. Tuberculosis, malnutrition, missing limbs. Less than half of them had a clean bill of health.”  
  
“I wasn’t exactly the poster child of good condition myself,” Steve said. “Far from that.”  
  
“Then I guess either you were really lucky or you were in better hands. Three of them died in the first month alone.”  
  
Steve froze. “What of?”  
  
“Seizures, mostly. They got replacements though. Kept the test group at ten for a while.”  
  
“Until?”  
  
“’63. We’re down to six. Five male, one female. It’s graduation day.”

* * *

  
November 22, 1963. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, ate a bullet while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. The blame was pinned on former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald, who was known among his military buddies as ‘Ozzie Rabbit’ after a popular cartoon character even older than Steve. Steve had been asleep at the time of Kennedy’s assassination. As with many other things he’d never doubted the truth served to him with a side order of naivety.

John F. Kennedy had been snuffed by the class pupil of the Winter Soldier program.

Bruce found more evidence, interlinking with pieces of Steve’s own documentation. Belfast, Latvia, Romania. More gratuitous intervention in US domestic affairs, as late as the 1990s.  
  
“This is where it ends,” said Bruce, flipping to the first empty page. “Early ‘96. More than twenty years ago. Прекращено. Discontinued.”  
  
“What about the six? Discharged?”  
  
“No…” said Bruce, got to his feet and began walking, never taking his eyes off the journal. “Not discharged, Cap. Discontinued.”  
  
They advanced deeper into the abandoned base, battling webs and dust and the occasional false door and hidden hallway.  
  
“They were made here,” Bruce explained, steering them through the dark. “It was their cradle.”  
  
“And their grave?” asked Steve.  
  
That was here also. At least for five of them.

* * *

  
Six cryogenic tanks lined up in a semi-circle. They reminded Steve of the aquarium down in Battery Park he used to frequent as a kid. He stared at these glass cages in Siberia the same way he’d stared at the sharks back in the Great New York Aquarium — open-mouthed and full of wonder, in that scary way that let the little hairs on the back of your neck stand on edge.  
  
He wondered if this was what Phil Coulson had felt like looking down at the frozen block of ice that had been his Captain America card collection come to life.  
  
“Are they…?”  
  
“They’re dead,” Bruce said firmly. He pointed to the control panels in front of each of the tanks. “Someone must have pulled the plug, or the generators clunked out at one point. Cryopreservation only works with temperatures as low as -80° to -180° Celsius. Anything above that is just plain old hypothermia with a side order of starvation and dehydration. At least if you’re not Captain America at the bottom of the Arctic Circle.” He paused abruptly as if just remembering why Steve was here in the first place. He continued in a slightly softer tone. “I'm sorry, Steve. If your friend was—”  
  
“Yeah. I get it.”  
  
He walked from tank to tank, looking into the dead eyes of five-sixths of the ill-fated Zimniye Soldaty. Most were in the late stages of decomposition.  
  
None of them were Bucky Barnes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you help Bruce and Steve hack into Hydra's secret corpse bunker?
> 
> [Of course you can, we believe in you.](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/13/13.html)
> 
> All clues are in the chapter. 
> 
> Comments are loved and appreciated.


	14. Chapter 14

“You doing good over there, babe?”

“Mhmm, yeah. Good vibes.”

Pepper adjusted her sunglasses and pulled down the sun visor to shield against the light. Tony changed up a gear, put the pedal to the metal, then put his hand on Pepper’s thigh. The engine of the Roadster purred like a cat before the fire. They cruised down the PCH with the wind in their hair and the worries off their minds. It was one of those days. The universe had aligned.

He’d wiped Pepper’s slate clean. Let bygones be bygones. The Potts-Stark hookup wasn’t going to falter because of a handful of sports cars and off-tune guitars. They weren’t that shallow, no matter what the gutter press printed about them. Tony’s heroic return was starting to lose the halo of untouchability anyway. As much as _Entertainment Weekly_ had heralded him to be legendary big stuff, it wasn’t beneath them to insinuate all sort of bogus. He was a trending hashta. The peanut gallery of the Internet went wild with speculation.

Speculation over what exactly? A whole host of topics. Where Iron Man was, if his fling with Pepper was drawing to a close, how a reliable source had seen him check himself into a detox center just last week. It was the day-to-day grind of a public life and it felt amazing to sack it all and leave it behind for an afternoon. There was a cooler stuffed full of goodies in the trunk and a Jarvis-verified destination on the GPS. It was picture-perfect.

Halfway down the road Tony’s phone began to twitter cheerfully. _Unknown caller,_ it said.

“Do you want me to…?” offered Pepper.

“Turn up the volume on the radio?” Tony said and suppressed the call. “Hell, yeah.”

Pepper laughed, found an Oldies But Goldies station and subjected herself to Tony’s ear-abusing warbling. Later, on the fifth or six try that day, Tony would pick up the phone in a flash of irritation and tell Nick Fury to go blow it out his ass (the call had short-stopped another, far more pleasant type of blowing), only to be told that, finally, SHIELD was bending the knee.

They needed help and there was nobody to help but Tony. After all, he was the leading expert on space whale physiology.

* * *

Fury hadn’t let on what garage they’d valet parked the ship at, only that, with Tony’s permission, he’d send a heli to pick up Tony from a destination of his choice and charter him to wherever X was marked on the map.

Tony let him sizzle before he agreed, because half the game was about making the other’s life miserable, and Fury had so far hustled to put a yoke in Tony’s wheel every chance he got. It was only good sportsmanship to appropriately retaliate.

The truth was a little more gray than that. On one hand, he burned to know what Fury’s bosom buddies had done and didn’t know how to get out of again. On the other hand — and he could say that now, because he had two again — Tony wasn’t sure whether he was ready to step foot back in that cursed place. This was a peculiarity he hadn’t told anyone, not his therapists or Bruce or even Pepper, although he suspected Pepper knew or at the very least hypothesized. She was good with these things and Tony was a terrible actor in all matters concerning the finer points of his space exploration.

A SHIELD chopper would be waiting at SI Los Angeles to pick him up at noon. Tony had declared a priori that if he saw a bird at Malibu he’d have Jarvis shoot it right out of the sky. Enough that Fury had house-invaded him back in 2010. Tony would have no more of that subjugation. This went on his terms, or none at all.

Right now it wasn’t midday yet. In fact it was well before sunrise, but there was no more sleep to be had for Tony. He’d twisted and turned and fought a losing battle against the comforter before Pepper had groggily banished him from the bed.

So here he was, after a piss and a glass of water, standing at the bottom stair leading down to the Hall of Armors. Until this very day, Tony had omitted the descent. Procrastination? You bet your bottom dollar.

“Okay, okay,” he mumbled to himself. He was aware, objectively, that the only thing waiting beyond the door was an umbrage of his self-made demons. Iron Man had saved his life on so many occasions, including even this terribly drawn-out last. Why then was he dreading the suits like the sound of the last trumpet?

_Maybe because you hauled your best friend’s corpse out of one._

“Jarvis,” he said in an almost plea. He didn’t want to think about Rhodey. But he also didn’t want to not-think about Rhodey. That was just as bad, black treachery almost.

“Shazaam, Jarv. Open my cave of wonders.”

“A retinal authentication will be needed in order to create a user interface, sir.”

“Paranoid security measures?” Tony stepped up to the scanner. “I like that.”

There was an affirmative beep. The doors opened. There was no genie inside, no flying carpet. The only thing in abundance was dust. Tony sneezed after inhaling a lungful.

A spring cleaning was in order, no doubt. Tony advanced past the entrance and into the center, surveying his former blueprint planning come to life. He spotted Dummy under linen sheeting similar to how he’d found the Flathead Roadster, and five armors stared fixedly at him from behind their glass cages. Tony walked up and down in front them. He didn’t stop at the two unstaffed stands (although his heart did briefly, in both instances). His palms were sweaty in his pockets when he asked, “Are any of them serviceable?”

“Mark I is in mint condition, sir,” Jarvis offered. “All others exhibit various extent of damage.”

Tony almost laughed. How would that look like, knocking on Fury’s office door wearing a scrap suit made out of old rocket casings?

“Mark I’s out of the game, buddy. Can’t use that.”

“Please specify your requirement parameters,” Jarvis prompted.

But Tony had already made up his mind. He stood in front of the armor, fourth in a row, and remembered steering a vintage race car through the narrow streets of historical Monaco.

“Will you pack the suitcase for me, pal? We’re going on a trip, you and I.”

* * *

Maria Hill did not bother with hellos.

“There's no way you're bringing that in.”

They stood at the entrance to the hangar, Tony in pinstripe and sunglasses with the Mark IV cuffed to his wrist in briefcase form, Pepper immaculate in white and throwing him several shades of I-told-you-so.

“Bringing what in?” Tony asked with faux-innocence.

Hill didn’t indulge him. “There is one entrance, in and out, and it's through this way,” she said. “All other access points are cordoned off.”

“Right. So that way?” Tony asked, and began breezing towards something that looked like a cross between an airport security scanner and a corrugated iron portacabin. Hill was in front of him in a flash, one hand on his chest. “Why, Agent Hill,” he said, winking at her. “Not in front of my girl.”

Hill snorted. He could practically feel Pepper rolling her eyes. He could also keep playing the clown as long as it kept the sick feeling in his stomach at bay. With every step closer to the ship's entrance, Tony felt as though he were drowning and the briefcase attached to his wrist was the millstone pulling him inexorably down.

“Just let me get all dressed up for the occasion,” he said, his hands slick and clammy around the handle of the portable suit.

“Absolutely not.” Hill's voice cut through the blood pounding in his ears, cold and crisp. “We already stipulated that you would not be bringing your own tech on board. Check the Iron Man suit at the door or turn around and go home.”

“Given that we've established that you need Tony's help, I don't really see...”

Pepper trailed off as he loudly unclicked the cuff. She shot him a questioning look.

“I can play nice,” he said, dropping the briefcase at Hill's feet.

Pepper looked surprised, but equally proud. Even Hill seemed as though the wind was out of her sails. She'd clearly been gearing up for a bigger fight. Shame this had nothing to do with newfound maturity on Tony’s part, and everything to do with the fact that all of his memories of the inside of his suits now had a distinctly coffin-like overlay. He’d spent the whole ride over wagering on and against himself — would he find the backbone to climb back into Iron Man if he had to? He’d started out with an eighty percent probability on yes, but the flight had been long and the briefcase heavy, and Tony’s mind had run rampant. He was almost relieved that the decision had been taken out of his hands this way.

“I better get that back later,” he warned in order to round out his performance. “Untouched. It's coded to my fingerprints, so keep your second-rate hack engineers away from it.”

“Duly noted,” said Hill. She gestured to the entrance.

“After you, Mr Stark.”

* * *

“I’m incredibly sorry, Ms Potts, but it's classified from here on in,” Nick Fury said in a tone which made it very clear that he wasn't sorry for shit.

Fine. They'd expected this. Tony would have liked her there, but he didn't need his hand held and he sure as hell wasn't going to give SHIELD the satisfaction of seeing how big a deal this was. And it was, because this was where he'd lost four years of his life and his best friend and, in the end, his goddamn mind.

“Save the tour,” Tony said, all made-up nonchalance. “I know my way around.

* * *

 

They hadn't gotten rid of the smell. They'd masked it with bleach and antiseptic but it was still there, hanging heavy in the air. Save for the whale, SHIELD had eradicated every living thing on the ship, pumped it full of Chitauri-grade rat poison before setting foot on the vessel. They’d cleared out the corpses too. It was an empty husk now, disarmed and safe. Tony had personal assurance from Fury himself.

Despite his earlier claim of mastering the layout, he felt utterly lost. They’d scraped off most of his markings and installed thick power cables snaking alongside the walls. Bright fluorescent lighting hurt his eyes. There was no perpetual twilight anymore, no abstract shadows left up for one’s fantasy to bastardize. Maps were hung at regular intervals, all having handy _YOU ARE HERE_ designations. The transportation of choice was by a SHIELD edition golf cart. It was a hell of a sick parody of Tony’s personal purgatory.

They drove to a place denominated C-29.

Tony remembered it as Neverland.

* * *

It was a picture case of willful neglect. If the whale hadn’t been a whale but a Lab Retriever, Tony would have called up the animal rights guys and dobbed Fury in for pet cruelty.

“Vital signs are steadily decreasing, electrical impulses erratic, and there seems to be a glitch with the control interface,” a whitecoat prattled.

Tony looked from the whale to the diagnostics screen on the laptop which had been shoved in his hands. They were sat in a cubicle outside the microgravity pen, everyone but Tony with their hearts in their mouths over the Leviathan’s critical condition. Tony’s heart was in his mouth too, but for other reasons. He felt inexplicably defiled, walking down these bleach cleaned corridors with everyone and their mother turning their heads when he passed, pointing fingers and whispering under their breaths. _Hey, isn’t that the guy? You sure? Flat out! See anybody else who looks like he’d rather be booched by Captain America than be here?_

Tony swallowed. He rubbed at his eyes, massaging out the screen soreness.

“Mr Stark?” one of the interns prompted. He wore glasses and had pimples and probably cracked one off every morning to the latest edition of National Pornographic.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m on it.” He pulled at his tie. “Is there A/C in this place? It’s scorching hot.”

There was an A/C, and it was turned to a cool sixty-five Fahrenheit throughout the ship, which led to a bit of confusion as to why Tony was sweating it out like a pig at the slaughter. They gave him a plastic bottle of water. He tried not to choke on it the way he had when Rhodey had offered him the same, just a couple levels down during their reunion in Fort Stark.

“You fucked up the algorithms, that’s your biggest concern. What did you base the translator module on?”

“Mostly your notes, sir,” Pimples admitted. “We found them…” He gestured loosely at their surroundings. It was the discreet way of saying ‘scrawled on the walls in your own shit’.

“Well,” Tony said. “You got more faults in here than a map of California earthquakes. No wonder the whale’s bitchy. It’s getting all the wrong signals.” He handed back the laptop. “Get your ABCs straight, then we talk.”

He stood, water in hand, and pointed to the door.

“Now who’s my cabby? Presto, I’m on a tight schedule. There’s a company to run, clean energy to revolutionize, a beautiful woman to take to bed.” He pointed a warning silicone finger at Pimples. “Don’t kill my whale while I’m gone.”

* * *

He’d taken an extra helping of sleep aid that night to avoid this very happening: sitting up straight as a rail in the middle of the night, breathing like he’d just completed an intercontinental swim session. And yet here he was, slightly drowsy from the pills, blinking into a semi-dark that didn’t quite match up. There should be white marble where there was carpet, and a NexStar telescope instead of a slapdash clothes rack with his suit looking like a spook flung over it.

It was dark outside, the sea transitioning seamlessly into a thick blanket of clouds. He would gouge his eyes out with the NexStar even if he had it. There was no moon out tonight. Something else was though. Tony squinted into the dim dark.

At the foot of the bed hovered a familiar silhouette in navy blue uniform, all stripes and epaulets and white cotton parade gloves. The head was bent in behind the left temple. Blood had dried there in maroon stripes, looking like old war-paint. The bone underneath was cracked, allowing for a peek at grey spongy matter.

Tony felt a sudden compulsion to reach out and stick two fingers in it. He was pretty sure it would feel like Play-Doh, or maybe like squishing a jellyfish. He wondered if he could pierce it. If it would, should he exert just enough pressure, burst open like a ripe seed pod. He had to bite his tongue not to verbalize this sinister craving. _Hey, you mind me stirrin around your cheesebox a little? I’m pinin for some puddin head._

“Come on, man,” Rhodey said. “We’ve got places to go.”

Tony looked to his right where Pepper was a vague mound under the comforter, sleeping soundly. Then he looked back at Rhodey, who’d been dead for more than a year.

“I’d rather catch some shuteye,” he admitted. He wasn’t sure about the particulars of going to sleep within a dream, but he mos def wasn’t going places with his thought-up best friend’s corpse tonight.

Yet the urge to get to his feet was on him, incredibly strong and involuntary. Rhodey’s eyes bore into him like probes picking at his brain. Tony threw back the covers with a groan and swung his feet to the carpeted floor. He didn’t like this dream. He had a hunch that the moral of this story wouldn’t revolve around reliving campus shindigs or driving around in vintage cars. He grabbed a shirt off the hangar, not out of modesty but out of sudden repugnance. He didn’t want anything touching his bare skin, lest of all Rhodey’s cold corpse fingers.

Rhodey exited the bedroom. Tony followed, but left the door angled open. He didn’t know if Pepper was a stationary prop or a plot twist, but it was better not to cut off one’s line of retreat.

They went down into the shop which wasn’t some nightmarish monster’s lair but simply a room stuffed to the gills with engineering scraps and the covered Ford with its faulty spark plugs. Then they descended further, past the wine cellar and into the Hall of Fame-Shame.

There was Mark I, dented and partly corroded after the desert showdown, Mark IV blackened by Vanko’s electric bullwhips, and Mark VI which had seen better days after a fun-ride in SHIELD’s helicarrier engine. Mark VII and War Machine were veridically absent, still up there on the ship, getting close and cozy with the metal mite. Talk about abandonment issues.

“Hey Tones, check this out. You’ll love this. This is totally up your alley, man. I’ve been _dying_ to show you this.”

Rhodey motioned him over. Tony didn’t want to go — he was well versed in the horror genre — but an invisible force pushed him. He walked, stepping right into a puddle of oil. It clung to the soles of his feet, making his steps squeaky and slippery. He tried brushing it off, but he had places to go.

Rhodey stood next to the garbage chute. It was open.

“Hell no,” Tony said. He thought of clown faces peering out from underneath sewer grills. “Nice catch-up, but I’ll head to bed now.”

He made to turn on his heels and the oil on his feet left an artistic evoo motif on the floor. But somehow he wasn’t any closer to the stairs. Spacial principles didn’t seem to follow the rules of physics here. Instead he slipped on the oil and toppled head-first into the chute. It was a long fall. Tony prayed he’d snap awake the moment he snapped his neck at the bottom.

No such luck.

The chute belly was not the garbage container. Tony stood in the center of Fort Stark. No bleach, no fluorescents, just a dim, dark warren. Rhodey was gone.

“Hello?” said Tony. He thought he’d never be afraid of solitude again, but he was scared stiff now.

“Pepper!” he hollered. He’d left the door open. Maybe she’d hear him. She could get him out of here. But what if Rhodey had closed the bedroom door just as he’d closed the garbage chute? Tony would be trapped in Pandora’s box forever. He tried climbing up the slope but kept slipping on smears of engine oil. Then there was a tap on his shoulder from behind. Tony shot around. Steve Rogers stood there. Good old bestest bud Stevie! But he didn’t look philanthropic at all.

“You want to watch your fresh mouth,” Steve whispered, blowing scotch fumes into Tony’s face, scotch fumes consistent with a certain ‘32 Glenfiddich. “If you don’t, I’m apt to.”

Tony allowed himself a moment of intense weighing up. Then he turned around, pounded against the metal doors of Fort Stark and bellowed at the top of his lungs for Pepper. Steve, true to his word, grabbed Tony by the throat. He throttled him back and forth and he must have hit Tony’s head against the chute hole once or twice. Things got really fuzzy, as they were prone to in very bad nightmares.

Tony was a good-for-nothing, Steve said, he was riding his daddy’s coattails and he most definitely didn’t deserve to win the legal battle concerning the ship — stupid stuff like that. It almost felt like Howard was talking at points, which only made it worse.

Then Steve clocked him full-on in the mouth and all the dental implants went flying. Tony coughed, spraying blood as well as spit. His throat felt like it was on fire.

“ _Peppahhh,”_ he squealed, seeing nothing but his own tears. _“Oh Pee-ppaaahhh!”_

“I told you what would happen if you didn’t leave off being so fresh with me,” chastened Steve from behind.

He picked Tony back up, clean off his feet. “I told you a million times,” Steve said. “Do you believe me now, Tony?”

“I _do!”_ Tony screamed. He squished all the air out of his lungs. “I do, I promise I _do!_ ”

* * *

“…hold this under your tongue, Tony. Just hold it there. You’re doing great. It’s all right. It’s all right. Shhh.”

It was so bitter. He tried to spit. Someone clamped his jaw closed, but gently this time. The taste spread across his palate like a wildfire. He choked a bit on his own drool.

“Tony. Hey. Are you with me?”

He rolled his eyes in their sockets. A warm lethargy spread through him. It felt like having just woken up after dozing off on the beach, getting sunburned.

“You had a nightmare,” Pepper said.

Tony looked around. There was no NexStar and no undead James Rhodes and the only one getting rough with him had been the blanket. It was morning, the sun was out, and Pepper lay next to him.

“I had a nightmare,” he said, just to make sure.

“Yes,” said Pepper. “A bad dream. It was pretty intense.”

“Was it?” He’d already begun to forget. Steve’s hand around his throat was but a distant memory. Pepper kissed him on the clammy forehead.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Waffles? I was working on them when I heard you.”

“Sure,” he said, even though he felt like eating as much as he felt like playing a second round of peek-a-boo with Rhodey’s corpse. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

Pepper cleared out when the smell of burnt batter reached the bedroom. Tony allowed himself a moment. He sagged back against the pillow, trying to remember Rhodey’s epaulets and the walk down to the shop. By the end of the day he’d have forgotten all of it, save maybe for the smell of bleach and burnt waffle batter. He kicked off the comforter which had wrapped around him like Steve Rogers’ hands.  

Then he looked down and didn’t even bother suppressing the sound that came out of him like a captive breaking jail. It was the sound of a madman.

His feet were caked in dark, dried motor oil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So hey guys - remember that puzzle way back in chapter four when you were all helping SHIELD decode Chitauri keys for an as yet unspecified purpose? 
> 
>  
> 
> [Yeah, you're gonna need those keys right about now, people.](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/14/desktop1.html)
> 
>  
> 
> Also, you might have noticed that we're now updating on a Sunday (or Saturday evening, depending on what part of the world you're in). 
> 
> And also (tiny bit awkward), if you're still following this, can you let us know? We so very much appreciate everyone who checks in with us but we've noticed that's kind of dropping off a bit and it would be really good for us to know if people are silently reading along (which is totally cool if you are and hi!) or if people are just giving up on the fic. So if you're still with us, can you drop us a line?


	15. Chapter 15

They walked on in tunnels of dark, steel reinforced walls. There were cages, some subtle, some not so subtle. Bruce looked as uncomfortable as Steve felt, but his tenseness went beyond the fact that they were strolling through an ex-Soviet torture dugout. He was one loud noise away from a panic attack.

“Claustrophobic?” Steve asked and thought of the ship, of how Rhodes and him had trailed Bruce's path of destruction.

“Something like that.”

They ransacked one of the treatment rooms. Bruce sifted through old, dusty boxes of last century medical supplies. If they had expected to find any wonder serum or some such smoking gun, they had deluded themselves. There was nothing save for out-of-date antibiotics, single-use syringes and rusty saline drip stands.

“What’s that?”

Steve stood, having lifted a bed frame that had been turned on its side. A metal filing cabinet was trapped underneath. Bruce crawled under and pulled it out. Files upended and spilled across the floor. He gathered them up in armfuls while Steve held on, one handed, to the bed frame.

“All right. That’s all.”

“All what? What are those?”

Bruce arranged the folders neatly on the floor and they sat down together, sifting through pages of Cyrillic. Stacks of files were categorized by their own identifying letter. А, Б, В, Г, Д, Е, Ё, Ж, З, И...

“Patient records,” Bruce said. The deceased ones were stamped as such in red. Short profiles accompanied lengthy documentation, a horrifying history of what was tantamount to torture. Pictures were attached only to some. Bruce intoned dispassionate and incomplete eulogies.

“Female, twenty-two years of age. Severely asthmatic. Previous jail time for petty theft. Psych profile says pyrophobia, fear of fire.“ Affixed to the file were detailed photographs of the burns they had inflicted on her. Marked red. Discontinued. Reason of death: suicide. She’d hung herself by her bootlaces.

At best, a few of these people had been low ranking soldiers who'd signed up under coercion or false pretenses. Many were petty criminals, bought cheaply from jam-packed gulags, vagrants that nobody would look for when they went missing. Of the dead, most had taken badly to the experiments. Some had gone mad, some had gone bad, most had to be treated with a bullet to the head. Bruce talked about catatonia and manic episodes, self-harm and aggression. Not all of it was viable information, but he voiced each story out loud, silently and solemnly acknowledging the horrors that this small forgotten group had been through.

They reached case Й after a meal’s worth of protein bars and some bottled water. Й was one of the recruited amputees. Male, mid-twenties, truncation at the left glenohumeral joint. The causal injury wasn’t expressly stated but indicated a recent event at the time of recording, which was early ‘46. There was no mug shot. Interviews with quack Hydra psychologists were either missing or had never been carried out. The information that was available depicted Й as thoroughly uncooperative. The presence of Latin script in a sea of Cyrillic jolted Steve alert. Й had uttered a grand total of two words while in the initial stages of the program.

“Definitely not a volunteer,” Bruce surmised.

“And not Soviet.” Steve jabbed at the letters.

_fuck you_

“American or British. But no pictures, no dog tags. Here’s a reference to an old tibial fracture.”

Steve was suddenly ten years old again, standing on the banks of the East River. Bucky had tried to impress Suzy Roberts from next street over but he’d slipped on a rock and broke his leg in addition to losing Suzy Roberts’ romantic interest. Bucky’s mother had all but flayed Steve on the verdict that he was supposed to be the sensible influence. Buck had laughed and made him sign the cast.

Steve shook the memory away like a cloud of dust. “This can’t be him. Bucky wasn’t...”

“An amputee?” Bruce offered. “Things happen. Look at Tony. I wouldn’t be quick to judge on that.”

“The guy survived?”

They checked the front for the telltale red stamp. There was none. All of the corpses they’d found had two arms. It was too good to be true.

“The guy in the footage, the one who looks like Bucky, he doesn’t fit the description.” Steve closed Й’s records, closed his heart on the matter.

“Could be a prosthesis,” Bruce offered.

“It’s not him.” Steve said. “I would know if it was.”

* * *

Documenting all they’d found was a pain in the neck. Steve photographed the analog files while Bruce busied himself with dismantling the hardware. Neither of them said it out loud, but the charm of sleeping another night in the bunker had lost its appeal now that they knew they were sharing it with five corpses.

“I could dig graves for them,” he said. “It won’t take me long.”

Bruce looked at the partially preserved men and women. “Something terrible happened here, Steve. This could be evidence one day.”

A sense of panic washed over him, that his one thread might go up in smoke and red tape before he'd had the chance to thoroughly explore it. “You want to do that? Hand all this over? To whom? The feds? Fury? Surely not, right? Natasha, she wouldn’t have—”

Bruce held up a hand. “I’m not going to do anything, at least not while you’re looking for your friend. The best thing we can do right now is leave them undisturbed. Throwing them into an unmarked grave in the forest isn’t going to give them any more dignity than this.”

“We'll come back here,” Steve vowed.

“We will,” Bruce said. “We will.”

* * *

With the files from the underground lab and Bruce having ransacked every hard drive he could find, a routine police stop could get them into serious trouble. Steve stuck fastidiously to the speed limit. They kept to the rural routes where they could, avoiding populated areas even at the expense of extending their journey. Two Americans would stand out like a sore thumb, and Bruce's Russian was far too heavily accented to avoid arousing curiosity.

“I might stay in Russia,” Bruce told him two days out of Moscow. “Not forever. But for a little while longer.”

Steve could see the appeal in that. He wasn’t looking forward at the prospect of going back to SHIELD, but he was also rapidly running out of sanctioned leave and checking in was the only way of avoiding a manhunt. Still, he decided to ask the obvious question. “You avoiding Tony?”

Bruce burst out laughing, but there was no humor to his tone. “Got it in one. Tony, Pepper… and a guy called Happy whom I should have probably said goodbye to before I ran away to Ukraine.”

“It’s nothing you can’t make right,” Steve said. “Besides, if anyone takes first place on Tony’s hit list, that’s me.”

Bruce sighed. “That’s not a rift that’s going to heal soon. You know that, right?”

“Yeah. I guess. The poison—”

“I know. Yes. Extenuating circumstances,” Bruce agreed. “But you can tell that to Tony until you turn blue in the face. You're the villain in his story, whether you like it or not. He won’t let that go. Believe me, I tried.”

“You talked with him about me?”

“I talked with him about a lot of things. He tries to cope, and, well… let’s not get into that.”

Steve thought of Tony, how much time and the wrong conditions could change a man. Then he thought of Bucky and of the Zimniy Soldat program, and wondered whether isolation in space had been the easier fate if compared to years and years of deliberate human experimentation. He couldn't shake the memory of those files, lines and lines of incomprehensible reports detailing the gruesome fates of forgotten prisoners.

“Why did you do it, Bruce?” he asked suddenly.

“Do what?”

“The program. Whatever you signed up for that ended up with you...“

“A monster?”

“I wasn't going to say that.”

Bruce snorted. “Neither did they.” After a pause, he spoke again. “I was working on medical applications for gamma radiation. That’s, in part, how I grew fixated with you. Or rather Erskine's work. It seemed a waste to use something like that for military applications.” He cleared his throat. “No offense. I'm sure things were different back then. But I just couldn't shake the idea that Project Rebirth could have been more. Tissue regeneration. Reversing degenerative diseases. Curing cancer. I never wanted to create a super soldier. And I sure as hell didn't want to become one.”

“But you wound up front and centre as your own guinea pig on a military project,” Steve pointed out. “General Ross. I’ve heard about him.”

“Thaddeus Ross wasn’t the reason I turned into my own lab rat,” Bruce said.

“I thought—”

“Betty. It was Betty I did it for. Betty Ross. His daughter.”

“Oh,” Steve said.

“Oh. That’s right.” Bruce huffed, but even in the dark Steve could hear the wry smile in his voice. “Drag me to Siberia, take me urban exploring in a bunker full of corpses and then get me to relive my most painful memories.”

Steve doubted that Betty Ross even made top five of Bruce's most painful memories. He had personally witnessed several of them in glorious technicolour. Bruce acquiesced without much further prompting. Steve had always thought he was cagey, but he was actually an open book. Just one that seemed resigned to being seldomly perused.

“I'd gotten a tenture-track position at Culver,” Bruce told him. “We met at a faculty mixer I almost didn’t go to. She was a post-doc in cellular biology. She was beautiful, Steve, and I'm not just saying that because she was the first woman to ever look down the road I was on. She was fascinating, and she was the cleverest person I'd met and somehow, by some miracle, she thought the same about me. It took me half a year to ask her out. On our first date she dragged me ice skating. It felt like a set up to a horrible high school prank. I’d never skated in my life. I stepped into that rink just waiting for it go badly wrong. But it didn't. I fell, we laughed, we got snow cones, and later that night she grabbed me by the front of my coat as I was getting into my car and she kissed me. I didn't think it was possible to be that happy.”

He hesitated for a long moment. “I was so wrapped up in her, I had eyes for nothing else. So when she pushed me to apply for a cross-collaboration that her father was spearheading, I did. A few months before I’d met her, I would have never touched a military contract with a barge pole. I didn’t even bother with the fine print.”

“And that's how?”

“And that's how,” Bruce confirmed. He sighed. “I don’t know what went through my head. I wanted to impress her. I wanted to gain her father’s goodwill. I wanted to be a man instead of a mouse. I let them rush me into trials. The serum was far from in-vivo studies and I knew that, but I yielded. Before I knew it I had put myself forward as the first human test subject. The rest is history.”

“That's rough,” Steve said. Who knew what had made the difference between his outcome and Bruce's save for maybe dumb luck and a few odd numbers in an equation? “You ever see her again?”

“Once. A few years ago now. We reconnected long enough for me to realize that I still loved her and that she probably felt something too. But her father tried to kill me and then I broke Harlem. Any hopes I had whatsoever were doomed at that point. I hear she’s engaged now. Anyway.” Bruce swallowed audibly. “What about you? Any big lost loves in your past?”

“Just one,” Steve said. “Although I think you win more points on the catastrophe scale.”

“I did wonder if there was more to this than just chasing after an old friend.”

Steve groaned and rolled his eyes. “It wasn't Bucky,” he said. “Bucky and I were friends. He knew, but he wasn’t— _we_ weren’t. He was like my brother. I would have never…” He scrunched up his face. “No.”

“I’m sorry,” Bruce offered hastily. “That was rude of me to assume.”

Steve didn't know what possessed him to say what he said next. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been carrying it around with him for almost a century. It could have been a moment of madness, the past catching up with him. Or maybe Bruce was simply the right sort of guy to take such a secret to his grave. Either way, it came tumbling out in a single word, unbraked.

“Howard,” he said. “It was Howard.”

Startled silence. Then Bruce gulping down a mouthful of air. “Howard as in... _Stark?_ Tony’s... father?”

“It was a long time ago. A lifetime ago.”

“That must be… strange? Difficult? I can’t even begin to imagine.”

“All of the above,” Steve conceded. “And Tony doesn't know.”

“Can I make a suggestion?” Bruce asked.

“Of course.”

“For God’s sake, keep it that way.”

* * *

They parted ways in Moscow. They’d gone over everything, time and again, trying to pull other angles. But there was simply too much data, a lot of encrypted stuff that would take Bruce a while to cut through. Drawing verdict so early would be grossly negligent. But Steve had to return to the States, had exhausted the last of his leave time, and stretching Fury’s benevolence was in neither of their interests. Bruce cautioned him repeatedly against involving SHIELD. If Natasha had kept this a secret from them, it was probably for a good reason. Bruce, in any case, didn’t seem to trust them as far as he could throw them. Steve might not share his disdain for all things government and military, but he did agree to be cautious and watch what he said and to whom.

“I found a place in Kitai Gorod,” Bruce said. “It’s not too bad. I like it here. Maybe I’ll visit the Museum of Cosmonautics. It’s a tourist trap worth seeing, they say.”

Steve only grimaced. “No, thanks. I’ve had enough space travel to last me a lifetime.”

They took a taxi to Domodedovo and got coffee while they waited for the check-in desk to open.

“I’ll be in touch,” Bruce said as they shook hands. “Let you know if I find anything of interest. Just keep that burner phone on you.”

“If you do decide to come back to New York, you know we could always use—”

“I won't be setting foot within a mile of anything related to SHIELD,” Bruce finished for him. “So don't ask.”

Steve laughed. “Fair point. Okay.”

“And Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“If you see Tony, don’t mention you met me. It’s better that way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so ends our secret supersoldier corpse bunker arc. (Or does it?)
> 
> Wonder what Tony's up to...


	16. Chapter 16

The last thing she had been expecting was to emerge from a successful company merger and find that her four o’clock was a no-show. The slot had been rebooked, her PA told her. Something more urgent had come up. They’d been butting heads over this particular contract for months and SI had flown in the clients from Tokyo for this very meeting. She couldn’t imagine what was more pressing than that. Justly unnerved, she entered her office.

Inside stood Tony, impatiently tapping his foot. Her purse and jacket were already in his hands. “Babe,” he opened, and what followed was a whirlwind of words. “Hi, how are you, I love you, and if we hurry we can take a walk on the beach at sunset, so let’s beat it.”

She had to bite her tongue not to have a cat fit. “Are you serious? You can’t randomly cancel my meetings.” She pointed to the desk behind him. “It’s early afternoon, Tony. The sun won’t set for hours. You just shot down a high-level client… for what exactly?”

She wondered if walking on the beach was a euphemism for something else, but Tony didn’t really do those. What he did do was boil like a pot. A relaxing stroll in the sand was hardly what was on his mind.

“Honey, please,” he said, and the smile he offered her was so blatantly fake that it drooped at the edges. “I’ve been looking forward to this all day.”

She pulled out her phone to look at the calendar. Tony had played havoc with the reminder of her appointments diary for today. This was going to necessitate a lot of smoothing over come Monday. He might be comfortable blowing shareholders off, but Pepper was lousy at brown-nosing her way back into people’s favor. She never got away with the same easy charm as Tony, even though he made her carry the can for him more often than was appropriate.

“Don’t worry about it,” Tony assured her, ushering her out the door. If they’d lived in a lesser civilized world he would have dragged her out by the hair. An accounts manager caught her eye in the corridor, but before he could even approach Tony hustled her towards the elevator and outright molested the DOWN button.

Happy waited with the car. Tony coerced her inside, the way he usually would if he was horny and couldn’t wait to get her home. But today his behavior had nothing to do with sexual frustration. At least she hoped it didn’t. He was going to sleep on the lawn if he’d muffed the deal because he was foaming at the dick. But here were no come-ons during the entire journey home. To the contrary. Tony fidgeted like a toddler who had to urinate, declining conversation, huffing every time they hit traffic. By the time Happy pulled the limousine up before the Malibu front gates, he was a human ball of tension.

“Go,” he told Happy through the partition. “Take the evening off. Watch some of that soap opera shit you like.”

Pepper gave him a stern look. They’d already lost Bruce to Tony’s tendency to throw sharp-tongued comments without taking a minute to think. She didn’t want the same to happen with Happy. But Happy just nodded with an “Ayuh, boss,” wishing them a pleasant evening.

Tony jumped out of the car and sped around to open the door for her, but the way he was bouncing on his heels killed the whole gentleman attempt.

She tried to hide her confusion behind a smile. “Can I at least put some flats on before we take this suddenly impelling walk?”

As she got changed into yoga pants and sandals, she could hear him pacing a trench into the living room floor. Purposely, she took a moment to reflect. Tony had done a lot of consulting for SHIELD recently. It wasn’t a far off guess that his current mood stemmed from something that had happened in context with the ship. She just hoped it wasn’t anything that would backfire on them.

When she came down the stairs, he made another pass and held out a hand for her to take. What he was actually after was her cell, which he promptly dumped in the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter. In a gesture of good faith she allowed him to jettison her smart watch too. Which was mildly annoying, because taking it to the beach would at least have gotten her step count up for the day.

“Just the two of us, how about? No gizmos, no distractions,” he said. He pointed to the bluetooth earpiece and his own phone for emphasis. “Jarv, go on standby. Give us some lovey-dovey privacy.”

“As you wish, sir,” said JARVIS, unquestioning.

They went out on the veranda where a path snaked to their own small private beach. Following him down, she listened to the sound of the waves crashing and Tony breathing slightly more heavily than usual. She knew he was bursting at the seams to say something. While she couldn’t guess the particulars, she was willing to take a stab at what had precipitated it, given where he’d been all day.

She pulled him to a halt at the sand’s edge. “Tony,” she said. “Wait up. You know, normally people who’re worried about being bugged do the whole conversation-in-the-shower thing. I know we have a private beach to fall back on, but… slow down.”

“We can’t do this in the shower,” Tony shot back. “We can’t do this anywhere near the house. Not anywhere that’s got network range.”

He began to walk again but ended up marching. She had trouble keeping up with him. Flats had been a wise choice.

“Things with SHIELD didn’t go well?”

“I was back on the ship. For the whale, right? I think it’s going to croak,” he said, scrunched up his face and bulldozed over whatever emotional response was threatening to leak out of him. “I told you about J. How I plugged him into the systems. He wasn’t only in the suit but in the ship computer too. Remember?”

She nodded. They marched on.

“I speculated, I mean I hypothesized — there was this small chance — that after the frizz he’d try to retreat into the Chitauri OS, but with everything going on—”

“Okay,” Pepper said. She took him by the hand and gave it a light squeeze. “Breathe.”

Tony pulled away, wrung his hands, exhaled. “I think he’s still in there. SHIELD thinks that too. I walked in on some of their techies today. Fury got wind of it and had me deported before I could get a closer look, but I have a hunch.” His eyes widened. “If he’s still in there, Pep? You know what that means? Can you imagine the implications of that? I need that ship back. I need to get it back ASAP.”

She took him by the elbow. Gently she steered him back from the water's edge. He needed to calm down. He was so jumpy. She could not imagine the implications of anything, because she had no idea what he was talking about.

So JARVIS was installed on a spaceship, big deal? Tony had put him there himself, not to mention that he was in just about everything, from their cars to their thermostat. Surely he could revert to Sleep mode when he wasn't operational. She knew Tony was protective of his AI, but she'd always assumed it was in a ‘don't touch my stuff’ way. Yes, anyone with half a brain could tell that JARVIS was something special, lifelike to the point where he pushed the boundary of an advanced software program. But he wasn't human. He was lines of code. Code that Tony had programmed. A personality that followed mathematical algorithms.

“Talk me through this,” she said. “It's not as if SHIELD are able to do anything. You've always said JARVIS was unhackable. So why is this now a problem?”

“You don't get it,” he told her. If not angered, he certainly sounded disappointed. He ran his gaze over her once more, paranoid that she was bugged. Eventually he continued. “We go a ways back, the two of us, J and I. You see, at one point; it was after Howard got himself and my mom wrapped around a street lamp; I fell into the most terrible of human traps. I wanted to make past things undone. I wanted the impossible. I fancied playing the celestial dictator, if you get my drift. Now, digging up my putrefied parents would have been a stretch—”

“Jesus, Tony,” Pepper interjected.

He held his hands up. “I didn’t do it, okay? I would have kicked my old man right back into the hole anyway. So with option A from open play, I had a look at B. Creating something new. Never got the baby-vibes, I was fine with unloading into the love glove — sure didn’t need no crotchdroplings to pay maintenance for — but there were other ways to satisfy my urges. I tinkered. That’s what I know and that’s what I’m good at. I made Jarvis. He’d been my final project back at MIT. He wasn’t supposed to be more than a natural language UI at first. I taught him to recite the school motto back in the day, and that already blew them out of their shoes. But he grew.

He grew much faster than I was prepared for and in ways I didn't totally understand. His development intrigued me. It frustrated me. At times, it bored me. But I was out looking for the limits and I wanted the whole thing.” He looked at her intently. “It’s like a good fuck. Half is worse than none at all. Do you follow me, Pep? Do you understand what I made?”

She did not follow. Well, besides Tony's minor god complex. That part, she could follow very well. But the rest, not so much. She picked her next words carefully. “He’s very, very advanced. He’s incredibly knowledgeable, and capable of learning, and—”

“Alive,” Tony finished.

She squeezed his hand a little harder and looked down to see she'd been holding the prosthesis without realizing. He'd tweaked it to be even more life-like, down to mirroring his body temperature. Because Tony didn’t do things by halves. He’d just said so himself.

“Tony,” she said hesitantly, “You spent a really long time up there, alone, with only JARVIS for company. So I get why maybe you feel...” She shook her head. “You're not God, Tony. You didn't create life. You made a very sophisticated piece of software. That's it.”

He pulled away as though burned. He pointed back to the house, towering in the shadow of the cliff side. “That thing up there, he might not be breathing or bleeding, but he’s very much alive. What makes him so different from you or me, apart from that he doesn’t have a body?”

Pepper surveyed him for a long moment. On one hand, this could be very neatly explained by Tony having been isolated with an AI and having projected a personality onto him. She was guilty of that herself. After Tony's death, she'd spent hours talking to JARVIS. He'd often been the only open ear she could voice aloud the extent of the bereavement she felt to. But that was in big part because it had been consequence-free venting. Because JARVIS wasn't a person, not really. He was a comforting facsimile of one.

Her skepticism must have shown on her face, because Tony pressed on. “How do you know that he only mimics and doesn’t feel? Where’s that line, apart from washed out sand on the beach? And if you can’t tell the difference, does it even matter?”

It did. It did very much. If JARVIS was sentient, if he was as real as her or anyone else, what were the ethical implications of using him to control the coffee machine or act as a satnav? The question made her head spin.

“The way he is now,” Tony said, “the proportions he’s reached… it would be murder. And I can tell you, coded or born, it won’t make a difference. He’ll act like any other creature would in his stead. He’ll try to come through, make the cut. And I don’t think I could stop him. Not another time.”

Something stuck her. “What do you mean, another time?”

“I mean _again_ . That’s how these things work, honey. The only way forward is by mistake.  Why do you think I made you leave every network-capable gadget in the house? Why do you think I’m carrying this?” He fished a palm-sized device from his pocket. A jammer. “Not so SHIELD can’t hear us. So _he_ can’t. He doesn’t know what I did. I burned the hard drives every time.”

He sounded so fervent that for a moment Pepper felt her blood turn to ice. Even if it wasn't true — and it wasn't, it _couldn't_ be — he obviously believed it, had been carrying it around with him for years.

“It's normal, for any project,” she said, “to have a Mark 1. Like your suits. I wouldn't expect you to create something like JARVIS without a few false starts.” She shook her head. This went way beyond the scope of the Philosophy 101 she'd taken as a filler class in college. Four years in space, a bad experience with SHIELD, and now he was retconning his memories of his software prototypes, ascribing retroactive meaning to programming glitches.

“I hate to say it,” she pointed out. “But you did once tell me that you were doing quite a lot of coke around that time.”

Tony flared his nostrils. “Christ, Pepper! I haven’t touched a fucking charge in years. Are we turning this into a drug talk? Call my damn therapists. They’re the ones putting me on all this shit.”

Pepper thought that talking to his therapists was an excellent idea. She put it on her mental to-do for first thing tomorrow morning.

“If they keep hurting him, he’ll start hurting them back,” Tony said. “I need unmitigated access to the ship. I have to start debugging so long as debugging is still an option. It’s been over a year he’s been in there, alone, ducked down the back alley of some alien dumpware.”

 _Don't engage_ , she thought. _Don't entertain the idea that there is a sentient outer space version of JARVIS currently being tortured._ Even if it were plausible, there was exactly nothing that could be done about it right now. Giving credence to Tony's nightmare fuel was not a good idea, no matter how she twisted and wriggled it. In a way, it was moot. Nobody could prove or disprove what JARVIS was. JARVIS had been designed to learn, to surpass whatever he'd been at his inception, to adapt to the world around him.

 _It._ The world around _it._

“I don't know what else to do, Tony,” she said. “I've had our best lawyers on this for months, but it's hard to navigate when SHIELD keeps stalling and pulling the national security card. The best I can think of is to lobby for you getting your access de-restricted. But you know as well as I that Fury won’t pander to anyone’s whims, especially ours. We need to engineer a ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ situation.”

“Make it happen, then.”

“I can't just make things happen, Tony.” She sighed. Somehow, they were back at square one.

“Yes, you can. It’s what you do.” He looked at her, fervently. It was the closest she’d ever seen him to begging. “Please, babe. He’s counting on me.”

* * *

That night she lay restless in bed. For the first time in years she was perturbed by the small red blinking LED in the bedroom’s corner.

She felt watched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Ever felt like you're not quite alone? ](http://chaedandspacelaska.com/16/16.jpg)


	17. Chapter 17

The drive from JFK to Brooklyn was long and loud. What Chest Day was for muscle boys in the gym, rush hour was for cab drivers on the street. A chance to brag, in this case, over who owned the loudest horn.

Steve looked out a slightly grimy window onto a slightly grimy street. It rained, gaily, the gulleywasher doing nothing to pretty up the drab grey of Brownsville. He found some fancy in reimagining the place’s 1930’s counterpart. He’d known this neighborhood very well. As they crawled by in bumper-to-bumper fashion, he mentally counted down the highlights of his less than stellar youth. He’d been beaten up in that alley, and in the parking lot that was a 7/11 nowadays. He’d clocked several black eyes behind Frankie’s, the diner he used to frequent with Bucky for their twenty cent a piece milkshakes. That one got revamped into a brothel, all fancy neon lettering and such.

Peggy Carter had asked him once, on a cab drive nearly eighty years back, if he’d ever thought about running away. Steve had told her he hadn’t. You start running once, they’ll never let you stop. You stand up, you push back. They can’t hold you down forever, he’d said.

The car pulled up in front of his flat complex. Steve rummaged in his pocket, finding a fiver among the spare rubles to tip off the cabby. Funny how he still felt like a hamster doing rounds in the wheel despite all of the standing and pushing he told himself he was doing. He was a guy approaching one hundred and they held him down by a tuft of hair.

It took all of his self-discipline not to show up at Nick Fury’s office the very next morning, demanding clarity on the scrap hints they’d found in Siberia. Bruce had been stringent. Don’t let it go any further. Natasha hadn’t, and she must have had her reasons. But he needed a track to give chase to, and Kosvinsky hadn’t provided anything but dead ends where Bucky was concerned. Dead ends and corpses.

Steve did not seek out Nick Fury the very next morning. He put it off until mid-afternoon.

And apparently, he wasn’t the only one urging to be granted an audience. The door to Director Fury’s office was shut tight, but not airtight. Especially not if one had a set of supernaturally enhanced hearing organs. Steve wasn’t able to pick out the specifics, but was left in no doubt over the fashion of conversation going on on the other side. It wasn’t of the friendly variety.

“Bad moment,” the secretary told him. “If you were hoping for a quick brief, hop by again tomorrow. That’s been going for a while. Looks like they’re going into extra time, too.”

Steve bit his tongue to refrain from asking who ‘they’ were. In a working environment where half the job description was to be able to keep your lips sealed, such inquiries were a moot point. It was none of his business.

“I’ll wait,” he said and took up position in one of the waitroom armchairs. The secretary shrugged, but didn’t comment. Steve could see her eye the digital on the wall. It was half an hour to clock out. What did she care if Captain America spent his after work hours sat waiting in vain? As long as he didn’t do it on her time, right?

He picked through the little stack of pamphlets and gazettes laid out for visitors. _Suspect It —  Report It_ read one booklet. It was a SHIELD flyer prompting civilians to call in if they had a hunch about illegal Chitauri tech doing the rounds. A year or so ago SHIELD had landed a guy dealing in alien weaponry. Family father, stable job, nobody would have picked him out if he hadn’t suddenly shown up in a Chit powered bird-suit, spoiling for a fight. Killed his daughter’s boyfriend on prom night before SHIELD’s STRIKE team got him. Clearly, he had deeper issues going than just tuning up xeno handguns. Maybe he’d resolve them in the reformatory, where he was bound to spend the rest of his life.

Steve picked up a Men’s Health issue next, leafing through the latest pump. _I Made 3 Changes To My Diet and Finally Got a Six-Pack, The Hardest Most Effective No-Equipment Workout You’ll Ever Do,_ and _15 Foods You Need For Your Penis to Perform_. Inside Fury’s office, the heated debate continued. As predicted, the secretary punched her card in not a minute too late, advising Steve to do the same if he didn’t want to spend the night camped out in the anteroom. He thanked her, but declined. He’d spend the week camped out in the anteroom if that’d get him any answers.

The boffo came twenty minutes later. Inside, the volume had crescendoed to a clear No Matter What disagreement, promptly followed by the door flying off its hinges. Storming out came none other than Tony Stark and he almost tripped over himself as he laid eyes on Steve and his copy of Men’s Health.

Tony looked like a dog on rabies. Whatever the point of debate, he obviously hadn’t come out on top.

“Hi, Tony,” Steve said.

Tony’s mouth was a hard line. He didn’t reply, instead rushing back into the office. The door remained open. Steve didn’t want to eavesdrop, but he’d have needed earplugs not to.

“You want to set me up with a nanny, I got one for you,” Tony said.

“We hashed and rehashed this to no end. I’m not trading off.” That was Fury.

“Get out of your own ass, Nick. I put the whale in the pot. Now I want a showdown. Got a bad hand? Muck it. But don’t pull shit on me.”

“Who’s your guy?”

“Outside. Your ball boy. Captain Stars and Stripes.”

* * *

So here they were, back where it had all started. Tony had cordoned off a Thou Shalt Not Pass section, briefing Steve on the multitude of legal fine print he’d tramp down if he did, and how the attorney’s fees would eat up the entirety of Steve’s veteran’s funds and then some, just in case he had any doubts.

Not that Steve was interested to cross the line of doom for the purpose of intellectual heist. He’d told Fury, in all honesty and sincerity, that he was the wrong man for the job. If they wanted someone to spy on Tony’s computer skills, they were better suited hiring just about anyone off the street. Steve suspected that was mostly the reason Tony had so fervently advocated him for the job opening. It certainly hadn’t come from a place of sudden acquittal. They weren’t any more best pals than they had been before. Tony had been very clear on that.

“I didn’t ask for you because I suddenly decided to exchange friendship bracelets. I don't want SHIELD looking over my shoulder while I work. Since that's not an option, I picked the dumbest person I could think of. That’s you. Congrats.”

And although he’d lain sleepless and offended in bed that night mulling over Tony Stark’s priggishness, Steve had gotten up the next morning with an impulse to make the best of it. He’d try to pluck out the wedge that was so firmly lodged between himself and Tony. If there was any time to mend fences, it was surely now when fate had put them back in the cradle of their misgivings.

But even armed with all the best intentions in the world, he found the whole pardoning act easier said than done. Tony put his foot down. No touching. No talking. Mind the boundary line. Veer off those guidelines, see you in the courtroom.

Of course, it wasn’t quite as straightforward as that. They did talk, even though it was perfunctory and cut down to the bare necessities. They walked shoulder by shoulder through the corridors, upholding the roles they were meant to play. To the outside eye, Tony was a different person entirely. He looked as though he’d gotten all of his old swagger back. But if you looked longer, and Steve had plenty of time to do that, you’d notice the brittleness, that tremor to him that hadn’t been there before. Apart from Fury and Hill, nobody knew that the real danger wasn’t Tony running off with classified Chitauri data, but him trying to spring Captain America at a chance to claw out his throat. Why Fury had agreed to this set up in the first place was anyone’s guess. Maybe he was looking forward to a show. Maybe he was hoping that Steve’s presence alone would frustrate Tony into whatever form of cooperation Fury needed from him.

The engineering sub-basement was a crass leap from what it had been during their last visit together. He remembered where he’d sat with Rhodes and Natasha, divvying up their rations while Tony and Bruce worked.

“Filth,” Tony huffed as he laid eyes on the one remnant of their odyssey. Iron Man — at least what was left of it — was still in the corner they’d abandoned it in, but it wasn’t propped up against the console anymore. Something had gotten to it in the meanwhile, and it hadn’t been gentle. The suit looked like it had been swallowed and regurgitated, sunny side up. And Steve wasn’t talking about overzealous SHIELD techs. At least he doubted they’d go about dismantling the pinnacle of robotics with fangs and claws.

Tony knelt beside his armor like a relative called in to identify a corpse. Warily, he lifted the tarp that was draped over it. Dead eye slits looked back at them. Steve tried to stifle the unwelcome deja-vu of Rhodes, of how he’d fallen victim to the nightmare beast. At least Iron Man’s head was still screwed on top of its shoulders. War Machine had no such fortune. Tony wiped some of the grime off the faceplate. It was a delicate gesture, that of a parent wiping a tear off their child’s cheek.

He murmured something. It was only in whisper, hardly intended for Steve’s ears, but he picked it up all the same.. “I got you, bud,” he said. “I won’t let them hurt you anymore.”

A small part of Steve, the one that had been decidedly more prominent when they’d launched into space a year ago, was inexplicably crabbed at this display of emotion on Tony’s part. Fury had thrown him another monkey wrench just for the heck of it. Bucky’s trail would disappear again in the fog, while Steve was stuck holding Tony’s hand as he played the Chitauri equivalent of Dress Up The Doll.

Suddenly Tony stood. For the first time he made direct, deliberate eye contact with Steve.

“Listen. This will go better if you don’t make a fuss.” He pointed to a corner in the back. “Plant your ass there, keep your mouth shut, and we’ll have the best working relationship there can be.”

“Cut it out, Tony.” Not even an hour into it, and Steve could already feel his teeth grinding to dust at Tony's primadonna antics. “Manners cost nothing.”

“Oh gee, I'm sorry,” Tony countered. “I wasn't aware this was the Steve Rogers finishing school. Will you break my arm again if I breach your etiquette standards?”

“You broke my jaw,” Steve retorted. “I think we're even.”

“You killed my best friend. I doubt we’ll ever be.”

“That's not fair.” Steve was assaulted by the memory. It came and went. He repeated himself, more put together. “Don’t think I don’t regret—”

“Leaving me for dead? Pushing Rhodey into an open grave? I can only imagine.”

“I wasn't myself,” Steve said. “That bite did a number on me. And you were...” A nightmare. One he still couldn’t wake up from.

“Surviving. For four years. By my fucking self. You don’t think that warrants a little slip of composure? Because I do. I would have been fine without you all barging in like morons. I would have slept it out, landed somewhere nice, gassed the life out of all the locked-up monsters. Risk-free. Nobody had to die. Especially not Rhodey.”

“We don’t always get what we want, Tony,” Steve said. “And sometimes the wrong ones make it back.”

 _Like you,_ he thought. But it didn’t do to say that out loud.

* * *

After spending half the summer watching Bruce hunching over a computer, Steve followed up the habit by watching Tony do more of the same. Unlike Bruce, who peppered his work with sighs and half mumbled thoughts out loud, Tony was uncharacteristically reserved, an intensity of focus that seemed sustainable for hours on end. He brought headphones, subjecting Steve to a muffled non-stop concert of The Best Of Classic Rock. Sometimes he underscored the exceptionally stellar bits with less than stellar humming. It wasn't long before Steve wished he'd brought a book. He wondered if this kind of boredom was a form of punishment in and of itself.

Speaking of which, no hurt in doing some recon work. Bruce had told him not to involve SHIELD on Natasha’s behalf. Although they were undoubtedly wiretapped right now, there was no one better to clear up a rather substantial question mark for Steve. If there was one person on this planet who was pathologically paranoid of SHIELD, it was Tony Stark.

He waved at Tony, making himself noticed.

Tony slipped the headphones off one ear. Something that was decidedly not heavy metal echoed in the room. Startled, Steve missed his opening.

“Is there a fire?” Tony asked.

“A what now?”

“A fire,” Tony continued. The contempt just about radiated off him. “Or a bomb scare? Are we evacuating? Is the rapture happening?”

“The thing,” Steve said, ignoring him. “The thing Natasha used. On the systems.”

“What about it?”

“It fried everything, right?”

“Some stuff. Important stuff.” Tony gestured to the workstation. “Why’d you think I’m sitting here? I could be better places, if not for what she did. Drinking beer with my best bud, for one.”

Steve didn’t fall into that trap. “She said it was only supposed to collect data.”

Now Tony laughed, but it was of the dry, derisive kind. “Yeah, she used to say a lot, didn’t she? It’s called lying, Cap. Look it up in the dictionary.”

“So it was intended to do what it did? Destroy… data?”

“Mhmm. Sure ate through the mainframe like acid on skin.”

That gave Steve pause. Their principal mission objective apart from searching for Tony had been to secure any and all potentially useful enemy intel. Why then would SHIELD instruct Natasha to willfully cripple the ship systems?

Unless, of course, they hadn’t. Because Natasha had acted on her own. Because, by a stretch, she hadn’t wanted SHIELD to get their fingers on whatever was hidden in those systems.

 _Because she knew what you don’t, punk_ , Bucky’s voice echoed in his mind. _That shit’s about to hit the fan._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well hey there, campers. Noticed anything suspicious lately? Remember, we are still at intergalactic war so [don't forget to report it.](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/17/17.html)
> 
> (And now, the weather.)


	18. Chapter 18

The dream did not repeat itself. He spent twenty minutes that morning scrubbing oil off his feet and counting his teeth in the mirror. By the time he made it downstairs, insignificantly calmer, the waffles had turned cold and the worry line on Pepper’s face had reached a new record in profundity.

“What was that? Are you all right? I thought I heard you screaming.”

“I bumped my shin on the bed frame,” he lied. “Hurt like a sonofabitch.”

He wasn’t particularly hungry, sticking his fork in and out the gluten free waffles, wondering if a fork would have made any difference in his dream-fight with Steve. _You could have stuck it in his eye, buy a few seconds. Or his throat. Messy._ Messy like the mystery oil on the soles of Tony’s feet. The stuff had been dry as bone, a pain to wash off in the bathtub. A pain to wash the bathtub, too. He’d stuffed the oil stained towels under a stack of clothes, planning to get rid of them once Pepper was out of the house. Burn them, just to be sure. Tony wasn’t superstitious, but the events of last night really pushed his attempts at a rational explanation.

He did not dare venture down into the Hall of Armors. Not only was he a coward about it, he was a gutless fraidy-cat. He asked Pepper to go under the pretense of a faulty camera and the requirement of a physical person in the room to validate this suspicion. All joeshit. The cameras were in mint condition. Pepper was a good sport about it though, mainly because she had no idea what was waiting for her down there. So while she sauntered, gullible and trusting, down the stairs into the Chamber of Horrors, Tony sat biting his nails, watching the show unfold on a Starkpad.

Cam 1. Pepper got her retinal check at the entrance. That alone should have lulled Tony out of his bother, because there were only two people in the world that retinal check was valid for, and none of them were Steven Grant Rogers. Cam 2 showed Pepper entering the room. She stopped in her tracks. Immediately Tony sprung to his feet, gripping the tablet like a squeezed lemon. Was she looking at the aftermath of his and Steve’s struggle? Was there an evoo motif on the floor, mixed with spit and blood from how Steve had manhandled him? Was she eye to eye with James Rhodes’ corpse, coming to the same conclusion as Tony had the night before?

_It would feel like Play-Doh and you know it, but you were too chickenshit to try._

Tony switched to Cam 3. None of his fears confirmed. The room was empty. Pepper had simply paused because she’d never been down there before. There hadn’t been a reason for it, and she wasn’t the snoopy type when it came to Tony’s toys in the sandbox. She just had to orientate herself.

“Which one’s broken?” Pepper asked over the intercom.

Not a single one, was what Tony should have said, but instead he told her, “Let’s just try them all. I’ll walk you through, give you a thumbs up if they work.”

Pepper said okay, and advanced according to his specifications. There were five cameras mounted in that room and Tony had a full three-sixty surveillance. He made Pepper poke and pry at every inch. Check that it was really DUM-E under the tarp and not whatever was left of War Machine, check behind Mark I because he thought he’d seen movement there — maybe Natasha doing the whole creepy Exorcist choreography she was so good at — and definitely check on the garbage chute. That last one he was openly disgusted with himself for having to ask of her. Here he was, the great Tony Stark, filling half of Guiness’ World Record book on his very own, sitting in his brightly lit living room while he had his petite, unsuspecting girlfriend give his regards to whatever lurked down there in the darkness of the chute.

He zoomed in so that he could see Pepper’s features up close — the chute itself was too dark, even for Jarvis’ high-end cameras — and again he found himself in a state of high alert as she wrinkled her nose.

“It smells like something died down there,” Pepper said, covering her mouth and nose and dropping the latch shut again. “Maybe a cat. Geez, Tony, you have to get that cleaned out.”

 _I’ll get on it myself,_ he wanted to say, _cause I know how to slide down that thing without breaking my neck. That’s what Cap’s welcome committee is for, waiting at the bottom._

Or maybe Cap wasn’t waiting at all. Maybe he was crawling up that chute right now as they spoke, only he wouldn’t slip on the oil like Tony had. He bent forward, narrowing his eyes to read more into the pixels of Pepper’s background. And what if Steve came? What then?

_Then you’ll grab that fork._

It was either that or running, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to live with the cowardice of that. He’d face Captain America with a piece of cutlery, there really was no alternative. At least they’d have an advantage, two against one. Pepper might be only hundred-ten sopping wet, but she knew where to hit a guy so it hurt. And all the biologic enhancement in the world aside, Steve would go down on one knee if he caught a good kick to the nuts. And then Tony would fork him. He’d fork the fucking life out of Steve. Pepper would yell at him to stop, but he’d keep going anyway. You couldn’t take risks with such things. They had to be nailed down, put into a coffin for good. And if the only way to cinch it was with silverware, then by God, so be it.

“Thanks, sweetie. You can come up. I think I know how to fix it now.”

* * *

He speared listlessly at his Carbonara. The pasta was slightly overcooked, dangling limply from his fork. He’d messed up the whipped egg to cream ratio. Not enough pepper, too much salt. Needless to say, Tony’s meal plan had long since gone to shit. He was an adult, though. He could eat whatever the hell he wanted. And if Bruce wasn’t around anymore to proclaim doom and gloom every time he had an extra helping of cheese, then all to the good.

Tony’s mind wasn’t revolving around pasta though. He’d turned the possibilities over in his mind for days on end. He had to have been sleepwalking. Sleepwalking and dreaming. He’d found a tipped over Mobile 1 Extended Performance canister behind the Roadster. Tony wasn’t a stranger to somnambulism, although his peak time for those midnight walks had been in fifth grade. It’d tapered off from there. By the time adulthood rolled around, Tony had become proficient in suppressing any night strolls with crunk juice. You didn’t sleepwalk on tequila. It was as simple as that.

It was also the most logical explanation. Whatever Pepper had smelled down there wasn’t somebody’s come alive corpse, but an unfortunate stray or the neighbor’s runaway hamster.

Besides, if anyone should know the difference between a dream and a not-dream, it was Tony. For months after his return he'd catch himself obsessively observing every detail of his surroundings, watching and waiting for something to change, for a crack in the facade. He was perpetually on the lookout for the giveaway that would warn him he was about to be ripped from his cozy fantasy of domesticity with Pepper, to find himself waking up in Iron Man's cold embrace, Jarvis' voice in his ear, his nose dry and tacky from the gastric tube, the lead feeling of sludge in his stomach. His body would be paralyzed from the drugs and the immobility, and it would be only him, alone in space, screaming his lungs out for a future that had never happened.

Thoughts like that hadn't plagued him for a while. Since he’d come back to the public, Tony’s world had turned so complex that it had no choice but to shed the dreamlike quality of the island. Life felt like living again, for better or worse.

“Hey—” A hand in front of his eyes, fingers snapping. He looked up, frowning. Pepper’s face softened. “You didn’t hear a word of what I just said, have you?”

He put the fork down tentatively and hazarded a guess. “I’m totally with you, babe. SHIELD.”

Judging by the relieved look on her face, he’d hit the nail on the head.

“They won’t give you access without a chaperone. Fury won’t have you in there alone.”

“I need a nanny?”

The memory of Ana Jarvis came to his mind, unbidden and unannounced. He hadn’t thought of her in years. Tony massaged his temples. Ana Jarvis, Edwin Jarvis, the circle closing with his parents on opposing ends of the spectrum. He had no problem reminiscing about his mother, but daddy issues he really couldn’t handle right now. Bad enough that Steve’s nightmare twin had sounded like Howard when he’d gone and gagged Tony.

“Nevermind. It’s fine,” he said. He’d lost all drive to go back onto the ship anyway. There were bigger skeletons in that closet than a rodent down the garbage chute. If it weren’t for Jarvis—

“Fine?” Pepper looked incredulous. “Tony, you've been riding my ass about this ever since...” she trailed off, remembering they were being watched. Good girl. “I thought this was important to you.”

“It is. It’s not that.” He shoved another mouthful of food past his lips. Would he dream up over-salted pasta sauce? He’d had a lot of nutrient deficiencies up there. Maybe. It wasn’t too far of a stretch. He shook his head. “Sorry. I’m having a bad day.”

“You don't look so great,” Pepper conceded. “Is it the arm again?”

The arm was fine. They’d done a good job with the prosthesis, but it invariably chaffed, and on bad weather days the stump itself was prone to get bitchy. But it was nothing the pill box couldn’t handle. It certainly wasn’t the issue of the day.

Before he could reply though, two things happened. (One) Pepper leaned over, maybe for an affectionate gesture or simply a reassuring pat on the back. Her elbow tipped the water glass, which swerved on the edge before taking a kamikaze leap to the floor where it shattered shrilly. (Two) Tony shot up like a rocket. His chair upended. He clutched the fork like a prison shiv.

Pepper looked from the smashed glass, to the fork, and back to Tony. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He pulled the chair back to standing. “I just got a fright. Maybe don't go around smashing glasses without warning.”

Pepper looked hurt for less than a second before she smoothed her face over. He wished she'd let him see what she thought instead of trying to be so patient all the time. He wanted honesty. He wanted to play cards on the table.

“So where’s Steve in all of this?”

“Steve?” He gawked at her. “What about Steve?”

“You just jumped up like you were jolted by an electrical current.” She pointed to the fork, now back in the lukewarm pasta. “And you yelled his name.”

“I didn’t yell anyone’s name.”

Pepper’s lips were thin and bloodless. “I have ears, Tony. I sleep next to you. I can hear you mumbling. I can definitely hear you yelling when you’re standing two feet away from me.”

Tony went on the defensive. “Isn't that what you're paying a fortune in shrinks for?”

“We both know you’re not sitting in therapy talking about Steve Rogers.”

He held it in for all of three breaths. Then it came spilling out like beer from a cold tap. “I can’t get him out of my head.”

Pepper began to sweep up the shards. Tony fussed around in his chair, raising his right foot so she could navigate the broom under it. When had she grabbed the broom, anyway? He felt an unpleasant sense of disconnect, like maybe the broom was the incongruity he’d been waiting for.

“I’m not scared of him,” Tony declared. He didn’t want her to get any stupid thoughts about it.

“Bruce said the venom made him behave very out of character.”

Of course Bruce would go around making excuses for Steve. He had no concept of loyalty. Proof enough that he’d upped and left the moment he’d seen a bolt-hole. Pepper bravely continued despite what Tony considered a dark look on his face. “Maybe if you saw him under controlled circumstances, you'd realize he's not the bogeyman.”

That was easy for her to say, not having been the one on the receiving end of Steve’s fists. He told her so, but Pepper only shrugged in that I’m-not-going-to-push-it-but-I-think-you-should-do-it way of hers. Another time he might have found that cute. It wasn’t so cute right now, especially since he knew she was right. What was the alternative? He couldn’t go knocking himself out every night with a palmful of pills just because he was afraid of dreaming about Steve Rogers.

There were no monsters under the bed, Maria Stark used to say.

 _And what good has it ever done you to listen to that bitch?_ a voice whispered which was definitely not his mother’s. It belonged to Bogeyman Rogers, who wasn’t waiting under Tony’s bed but inside Tony’s head. And that was a far more dangerous place for monsters to be lurking.

* * *

Steve Rogers was nothing but an inflated pot licker. But at least he wouldn’t be getting up to any hankypanky. Tony had to pat himself on the shoulder for his ingenuity. Face your fears? Put a check mark next to that.

Fury wouldn’t budge on the babysitter clause come hell or high water, so Tony had made the best out of it. Make do with what’s there, right? He’d kill two birds with one stone. Steve didn’t have the necessary IQ to be a bother while Tony worked on the priority, which was Jarvis, and he couldn’t nick a hair on Tony’s head so long as Fury had his all seeing eye cast over them. And if Steve _did_ go off the deep end, character altering venom or not, they’d be fighting it out on Tony’s turf. There weren’t any handy forks around (he doubted SHIELD’s Dollar Shop plastic cutlery could pierce as much as the skin on a rotten apple), but there were other means available for self-defense. SHIELD hadn’t uncovered a fragment of all of Tony’s hidey-holes throughout the ship. The Chitauri had better, much more persuasive tools at their disposal than tickling someone with brittle plastic tines. Tony knew. Tony knew _all_ too well. And it wouldn’t be beneath him to impart that knowledge if push came to shove.

For now though, all was fair in the land of milk and honey. Steve kept to his corner, unobtrusive, and Tony had time to work. And there was a lot of work to be done. The suit was in shambles, having fallen victim to, at Tony’s best guess, one of the wall crawlers. The plating was ripped, autographed in crude claw marks. He had to replace half the electronics in the mainboard just to be able and boot it up. The OS was fucked worse than a bitch on Pornhub. The most Tony managed to get out of it was the occasional audio sliver. Not Jarvis’ delinquent partition, sadly, merely scraps of whatever had been stored on the HD. Sports games, voice recordings, broken .mp3 files. You’d have Al Michaels competing for the speaker’s desk with the boys from CCR. Sometimes Harold Hogan added his own piece of advice: _that’s the way, champ. Do them in! DO THEM IN!_

If Steve had an opinion about any of it, he kept it quiet. There was the occasional breach at conversation, but Tony suavely shot that down like dogs in the road. This was about losing the stage fright, not snuggling up under the covers together. They would never be BFFs. Suppose one could condone the fact that Steve had willfully exiled him. Suppose one could condone the fact that he’d pushed James Rhodes before the bus. Suppose none of that had happened, that things had stopped on second twenty-nine instead of thirty-one, suppose Tony hadn’t spent that first night being peeled out of his armor by the monsters-come-alive, but instead gathered around with the so called Avengers to celebrate their unlikely victory.

Even then, in that most absurd universe, he wouldn’t have buddied up with Captain America. Howard Stark had been the one who’d wanted to be friends. Howard, in his attempt of brotherhood, had rapped up quite a score in order to finance his little trips to the Arctic. It had been all hush-hush on the company expense lists, but once Howard was in the grave and his son on the line to assume those debts, Obadiah Stane, at that time more mentor than madman, had pulled Tony to the side and said, “Son, that’s life. You pay for other people’s sins. Don’t grouse now, just foot the bill.”

The real crime was that Howard _had_ found something there in the Arctic Sea, only it hadn’t been Cap’s ugly mug, it had been the bottom of the bottle. Uncle Johnny Walker. Daddy the Deranged.

No. Tony would never be friends with Steve Rogers, not in this life or any other. He owed that much to his mother, God bless her soul, and if he had the chance to put Steve back in the ice block they’d hewed him out of, he’d do so just out of spite towards his father.

“Tony, say, how’s Pepper doing?”

The question caught him off guard. He looked at Steve, who was sat in his naughty-boys corner reading some rag. Tony was about to tell him not to pull Pepper into this — only over Tony’s dead body would Steve lay hand on his girl! — when Steve got up and came over.

Tony got to his feet too, ready to step it up. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on edge. He felt like a dog in the kennel. He’d rip Steve’s throat right out if he dared as much as make a pass on Pepper. But Steve merely folded over the magazine he’d been reading, a copy of last week’s In Touch, and it was popped open on page twenty-one. The headline read _CRASH & BURN! POTTS ON THE WAY TO ROCK BOTTOM? _ and showed a pervertedly rigged snapshot of Pepper, jaded after a busted buy-up proposal with an overseas tech start up. This wasn’t _CRASH & BURN _but a simple case of jetlag after a trip to Tokyo paired with some bad photoshop manipulation. He handed the paper back to Steve, disgruntled, and told him not to be so gullible. Pepper was fine. She wasn’t only fine, she was in top shape.

But on the way home Tony stopped and bought a copy of In Touch himself. He looked at the picture all the way it took them to get from the kiosk to the front gates of the mansion. He then made up his mind. He’d show Steve just how fine Pepper was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Is Pepper doing OK?](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/18/18.html)
> 
> Thanks as always to everyone who's reading along and we'll answer that question and more next week. :)


	19. Chapter 19

To say that it had been a stressful week was an understatement. Twitchy board members, some hang-up in R&D that she barely understood the gist of (but that involved a costly settlement to a lab tech who was, frankly, milking it), and on top of it all yet another invasion of privacy.

You could always tell a slow news week if it contained some speculation about her and Tony's relationship. They were this decade's version of Brad and Jennifer. Tony was endlessly interesting and Pepper was endlessly either pregnant or suffering from an eating disorder, depending on what angle the same photo had been shot from. She was reported to be continually stressed and/or torn apart with jealousy over whatever scandal they'd manufacture out of a picture of Tony politely kissing someone on the cheek at a charity ball. It was all bullshit, apart from the stressed part. Stress was something Pepper had in spades.

When she finally managed to get out of the office, Happy already waited outside the tower block. Before she could start giving him the third degree, he hastily told her that he hadn’t waited long at all. The cigarette stubs on the pavement told another story.

She slid into the backseat and found herself face to face with Tony. Tony sported one of his I’ve Done Something Awesome expressions. Half the time he’d really done something groundbreaking... the other half meant that he only thought he’d cracked the code on God knew what, but was actually in line for an arrest, a lawsuit, or a serious injury.

“Should I be worried?”

Tony looked like a kid in a candy store. “Babe,” he started, and she felt herself reflexly frown. “For the next four days ‘worry’ is not part of your vocabulary.” He reached into his pocket and with a little sleight of hand (where had he learned to do that?), pulled out a small cocktail umbrella.

“Congratulations,” he said, pinning the drinks accessory into Pepper’s hair. He grabbed her phone, holding it up along with his own. “You just passed TSA. These bad babies can’t come on the trip though.”

In a flash of panic, she thought of the mountain of paperwork she had to get through over the weekend. There was at least one lunch date she’d already canceled twice. There was a conference call with an out-of-state legal team and she couldn’t just…

A long weekend of privacy presented itself rebelliously in her mind. How long had it been since she’d taken time off? Not since Tony's recovery, and that hadn't exactly been a vacation. The company would still be standing in a few days. Was there anything that couldn't wait until Monday? The thought began to take form.

“I'm pretty sure kidnapping the CEO of a major corporation could land you in hot water.”

“Hot water, yes. Like a steaming jacuzzi, you mean? Already booked. And if you’re into the whole naughty boy kink, I’m happy to serve.” He turned and pulled a plastic bag from beside him. Conspiratorially, he passed it over. The contents were assorted tat; a pair of flamingo printed flip-flops, a toquilla straw hat and some off-the-shelf BananaBoat Sun Comfort spray.

“I sent Happy to Walmart,” Tony explained. “Just be glad he didn't get the inflatable pool unicorn.”

Pepper rolled her eyes, but couldn't help but laugh. Tony had a unique ability to pull off tacky with a slice of self-aware irony to good comedic effect. Case in point, the spectacle that awaited them at the airstrip. Two hula girls in short palm skirts greeted her with a straw penetrated coconut. Pepper had long since learned that the more she protested, the more Tony just went over the top with things like this. She thankfully accepted the coconut. It did not accessorize particularly well with her Ralph Lauren pantsuit, but if the set up was ridiculous, the girls didn't falter in their smiles in the slightest.

“Nice touch,” she noticed. “Subtle. Understated.”

Back at the car, Happy tried and failed to stifle a laugh.

Thankfully, the Hawaii theme ended at the airstrip. Tony shepherded her up the stairs into the plane, where the new theme seemed to be Pepper's Favourite Things, from the Côtes du Rhône on the table, to the grey and blue toned artwork on the walls, to the Ben and Jerry's in the mini freezer. 

As soon as they were in the air, Tony unbuckled, got rid of his suit jacket and popped the cork on the rouge. “So, I’ve got a couple things in mind. Admittedly, not all of them are meant for a broader audience to hear, but most come down to one little core principle of this weekend.”

He handed her a glass. “It’s yours. Not the wine, I mean, that too, but the weekend. There’s only one rule, and that’s no work talk. No SI, no ship, no nothing. Just the two of us.”

Had they actually properly had that since he’d come back? Time that was carved out specifically for them, without the specter of SHIELD and the company, without Tony's plethora of medical issues looming over them? What would they even talk about? On the other hand, it was a relief, the idea that it could be as simple as dropping everything and declaring a moratorium on what had been worrying them. It felt imminently possible. And if anyone was used to bending the world around him to suit his vision, it was Tony.

“Go on, honey,” he said and clinked his glass against hers. “Permission to be amazed by my boyfriend skills.”

She forced herself to leave the ‘but’ where it was, on the tip of her tongue, and instead relaxed into it, like a warm bath. She took the wine as though it contained an Alice in Wonderland potion that, once she surrendered and took a sip, would leave problems abandoned on the runway.

It only took half a glass for her to end up passed out from fatigue.

* * *

“Babe?” A soft nudge. “I know I said no stress, but if you want to see something besides the jet cabin, it’s time to stop drooling on my shoulder.”

How long had she been dozing? She smiled sleepily at Tony. He'd gone to so much trouble, and she'd slept through the entire flight. But it had been so relaxing, to just lean on his shoulder and let herself drift off. She couldn't bring herself to regret it. It was night outside, humidly warm. She had no idea where they were and she decided that she didn't especially care. She ditched her court shoes in favor of the downright horrific flip-flops that Tony had provided, trusting that if she left them on the plane they'd somehow find their way back home with the rest of their things.

A car waited to take them a short drive to a sprawling, secluded resort. It was beautifully decorated, all palm trees and manicured gardens lit up with strings of lanterns. She let the window down, listening to waves roll somewhere in the dark. They pulled up outside a villa-style hotel. Clearly, all arrangements had been made in advance. They were given full privacy except for a brief “Welcome, Mr Stark.” The concierge led them through a palatal lobby to their own residence. Even Tony seemed stunned by their room. He let out a low whistle, wishing the clerk away with a thanks and a C-note.

“I’ll admit it,” he gloated as they took a tour. “I outdid myself. This is something else.”

Amazing didn't even begin to cover it. Pepper was used to things being high end. In her time as Tony’s assistant, she'd arranged her fair share of obscenely extravagant dirty weekends on his behalf. But this was next level. This was Saudi Arabian Royal Family holiday accommodation. The veranda was picturesque, the ensuite an altar to the marble gods, and the King size bed humongous.

“You win,” she said. “I don't know what you win at, but you definitely win at something.”

Their suitcases had preempted their arrival. Tony had brought enough wardrobe to last them both for months, let alone a weekend. She smiled to herself when she glimpsed the lingerie he’d packed. Tony just brazened it out with a suggestive grin before asking whether she was hungry.

She’d only had breakfast that day, so she agreed, looping her arm through his and off they were, spontaneous as that. The restaurant was a short walk along the beach. Their table already waited for them, romantic candlelight all-inclusive.

“I’ve taken preparations, you see,” Tony told her once they were sat and entertained with an aperitif. “And since you like schedules, I’ve taken the liberty to play your very attentive PA. On tomorrow’s plan are having a lie-in, followed up by some lavish in-room breakfast, sunbathing…” He counted the activities on his fingers. “…an intense affair with your massage therapist, all interspersed with enough free time to go about your wishes and needs, and quality time to devote to your humble PA. I’d say it’s a win-win for everyone, and I’m glad you agree. On that note, bon appétit.”

There was a slightly surreal quality to the whole evening, from the surroundings to the unbelievable food and the easy banter between them. It was such a welcome relief to not be poring over their respective problems and to just eat and exist and enjoy one another. It took Pepper the length of the starter to relax into it — the wine helped — before she could fully accept that yes, she had actually just been pulled out of the office and whisked away to some Caribbean island at the drop of a hat. Tony took the bewilderment as a personal compliment. What delighted her most was the element of careful thought he’d sprinkled through it all. He hadn't simply thrown a wad of cash and ordered ‘generic luxury vacation for two, please’. From the set up on the plane, to the way the bathroom had her favorite hand soap imported, to every item on the menu being something they'd previously tried together and loved, it all spoke of an underlying attention to detail, to her, that gave it deeper meaning.

By the time they meandered back to the room, Pepper was mildly tipsy and more than a little exhausted. She knew that if she said that she was too tired, or not tonight, Josephine, Tony would have accepted it gamely. But sleep wasn’t on the cards just yet.

Inside, she kissed him in the way she'd been dying to kiss him all evening, the way you only kiss when nobody else is watching, intimate and fiery. She huffed with impatience as Tony took his time getting her blouse off, but it was only half-meant. This wasn't some quick under-the-covers fumble, late at night when they were both exhausted, which was the only kind of intimacy they'd had of late. This memory would be getting her through a lot of very tedious board meetings in the future.

“Okay,” Tony said, his voice honey sweet and gravel rough. “I think it’s time to move onto the pre-game show. We have a little over-excited fan here.”

She gripped the bedsheets with one hand, his shoulder with the other. Tony worked his way south. She wasn’t much into oral, had never been, but Tony was a compassionate advocate. He slipped a finger inside, then two. His tongue was hot on her. She tried to relax. Maybe that was what she needed. To feel taken, helpless. A little undone even. She spent so long being composed, being all things to all people. Kicking off her responsibilities could be as easy as shrugging out of her clothes. Let Tony take charge. It would make both of them happy.

“Fuck me,” she said. Tony looked up, his eyes twinkling dark and predatory. When they got together, it had taken a month of sweet, hesitant getting-to-know-you sex for Pepper to let her guard down, to be as wanton as she liked. He’d looked completely delighted then, and he sported that same expression now. 

Not that she had to look as far as his face to gather that he was excited.

“Turn over,” Tony said, pushing a pillow under her hips. He took hold of her, firm but not too firmly. She thought she wanted to look at him, but realized she didn’t much care. She pressed her face into the pillow and her butt in the air. 

“You want to be fucked, I’ll fuck you,” Tony said. There was something inherently primal about doing it from behind, which brought out the animal in even the most mild-mannered guy and Tony was no exception. It wasn’t the best sex they’d ever had, but it was good. She came suddenly, too quickly. Tony took longer, killing her afterglow a little before following her off the edge. He orgasmed inside of her. Her thighs were warm and sticky when he pulled out. They lay side by side in a cocoon of cotton. Pepper felt content letting the cool quiet of the room descend. She splayed her fingers across his chest, tracing the outline of the reactor.

It was Tony who broke the silence. “Shouldn’t this be the part where you tell me how amazing I am?” he asked, but she was unsure whether he was serious or joking. She didn’t have time to pick holes in arguments though. Tony leaned away from her touch, reaching for the nightstand drawer.

“I got you a little something,” he announced, producing a chilled bottle of Krug Brut and a small wrapped box. She was torn between curiosity and cold sweat _. _ She’d always presumed that if Tony ever popped the question, he’d make it into something grand and public. 

_ It can’t be. It’s too big for a ring. _

“Go on. Open it.”

While he poured the champagne, she untied the ribbon. There were butterflies in her stomach, or maybe just caterpillars. She wasn’t sure which. She pulled out a length of black satin fabric. An eye mask. Pepper burst out laughing.

“Really?” she asked. She felt ashamed about her relief.

Tony clinked the two glasses together. “Really. This is probably up there in my top five best ideas. Don’t you like it?”

She swapped a kiss on the cheek for the champagne in his hand.

“I love it.” 

And she did. A ring would have only complicated things. 

* * *

Being thoroughly fucked, slightly inebriated and ensconced in Egyptian sheets was a magic recipe for the best night's sleep Pepper had had in years. Her eyes fluttered open to the pitch black of the eye mask. The sun streamed steadily through the windows, shedding patches of light across the floor. The sea breeze ruffled the long, billowing curtains. The space next to her was empty. For a moment she debated just going back to sleep. She could. How late was it, she wondered, but quickly reprimanded herself. The whole intention of this was that she didn’t have to wonder. For once she didn’t have to dance to the clock.

She stretched, long and savoring. The balcony door was ajar. She leaned over the edge of the bed and grabbed a shirt from the floor, slipping it around her shoulders. It was barely long enough for modesty’s sake, but she figured there were unlikely to be any prying eyes.

She found Tony sitting in a deckchair, staring out at the ocean. His hair was still mussed from sleep. He was listening to music on his headphones. She came up behind him, leaning over the back of the chair. The smell of something sharp caught her off guard. A Pina Colada sat on the table next to him. 

Now, they were on holiday, she knew that. And maybe it was hypocritical for her to put her foot down after she’d happily drunk champagne with him the night before. But the sight of the cocktail instilled an unease in her. She leaned over to glance at Tony’s watch. It was barely 10:30 AM.

“Liquid breakfast?” She tried to keep her tone light, but the pithy comment fell a little flat.

“Hey sweetie,” Tony said, too loud over his own music. He didn't seem to have heard her. Then he followed her line of sight. He slipped off the headphones. “Want one? There’s a gal going round throwing them at you as though they’re hot coals.”

Tony had been teetotal at first, after his rescue. He hadn't had a choice with his meds, to begin with. Pepper had been quietly happy that he'd kept it up on return to civilization. But then teetotal had turned into One Glass Can't Hurt, and so on and so forth. And while it had never, not once, strayed outwith the boundaries of respectability, it bothered her to see him with a drink in his hand first thing in the morning. There had been a time when such a thing would have been a coin toss between whether they'd have a pleasant time or he'd be passed out by noon.

She wrinkled her nose. She didn’t want him to start day drinking. But she also didn’t want to be that girlfriend. He’d moved heaven and earth to assure this getaway was tailor-made perfect. It felt wrong to find fault in every decision he took which didn’t suit her.

“It’s early,” she said. “I don't want to be drunk before lunch.”

_ And neither should you _ , was the unspoken hint that she hoped he'd pick up on.

But lunch was all Tony picked up on. “You hungry? Because I’m starving. If you were bacon, I’d eat you.” To accentuate the statement, his gut rumbled noisily.

She ghosted a kiss over his lips, then ducked back inside to get herself presentable. By the time she re-emerged, the glass was empty. She hated that she couldn't help but notice it.

* * *

They had brunch on the beach, an exotic fruit plate, chilled drinks, coffee. She thought of the last time they'd been in a beachfront place, of closing the door on that house while the blades of a helicopter called them back to civilization. She had decided, then and there, to sell the whole island and never set foot on it again.

But here it was different. Tony wasn’t bound to the wheelchair. She didn’t have to tiptoe around him, afraid to stir up some traumatizing memory or other, afraid to hurt him because she touched him wrongly, afraid to be hurt because—

No. None of that. It had happened, but it was in the past. She wanted to leave it there. Tony was not that kind of man. She looked over at him, dozing peacefully in the sun lounger. The start of a sunburn was creeping on his chest, the same shade of corral her wrist had—

“Hey,” she said, nudging him awake. She had to get out of her own head.

“Five more,” Tony drawled.

“I think I want to get that massage now,” she said.  _ Not of the backhanded kind, though. _

Jesus. What was wrong with her? She sat up on the lounger.

“Then geddit,” Tony said. “I’m sleepy. I’ll pass.”

She put the BananaBoat Sun Comfort in his hand. “Try not to turn into a lobster while I’m gone, okay? You know I’m not big into seafood.”

“I love food,” Tony divulged, but he was already half asleep again.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll go now.” 

_ I’ll go now, because if I stay, I’ll think of how you looked when you slept out on the porch that night and how I was too afraid to call you back inside. _

* * *

The massage helped immensely. She had a lot of tight spots, some that she hadn’t even been aware of. Being kneaded from top to bottom was just what she needed. The unwanted thoughts slivered away like beads of steam on the glass door of the sauna she enjoyed after. When she was done she was rejuvenated, cleansed of all the demons.

She found Tony in their room, pursuing the same activity he’d practiced on the beach. He’d pilfered her eye mask. He snored a little, like he always did when he slept on his back. His chest was predictably scalded. Even without touching him, she could feel the heat radiating off him.

They made love twice more that evening, and again the next day. She only came once, but that was okay. Tony was charming and considerate, the picture-perfect boyfriend. Maybe that was why she didn’t call him out on the cocktail he had again in the morning or the scotch that accompanied his dinner. They were supposed to have a good time. They  _ had _ a good time.

But good time or not, she couldn’t shake that feeling. There was a cloudburst on the horizon. She couldn’t see it, but she knew it was there. It was like a presentiment. A closed door behind another closed door.

“What’s eating at you?” Tony asked her on the day of their departure.

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s really nothing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We agree with Pepper on thing: stress is something we have in spades.
> 
> For the first time there is no Easter Egg for this, guys. We were planning on Tony POVing the entire chapter, but there just wasn't enough time and we're struggling for motivation. I guess everyone has low times and writer's block and we've just hit a wall, full force. 
> 
> Until next week, gang.


	20. Chapter 20

He swallowed hard, his mouth dry. He kicked the empty can of Red Bull under the bed, hoping she wouldn't notice. Should he have tidied up? He wasn't sure what the etiquette was. He'd washed the sheets, showered. He’d bought a bottle of mouthwash, gurgling through half of it in one go.

She looked at him, all almond shaped eyes and wavy red hair that stopped in a sharp edge at her jawline. Her full lips were strawberry pink. When she smirked at him she even dimpled in the right places.

“Uh...Skolka? Skolka stoyit?”

“Relax, big guy. In English is fine,” she said. Her heavy accent ruined the effect, pulling him out of the moment and back into reality. Reality being that he'd just hired a prostitute who was the spitting image of Natasha Romanoff after window shopping escort sites in a fit of maudlin self-loathing.

She rattled off a list of services and prices. Just the bare bones descriptions of most made him blush to the tips of his ears. He wanted to make her stop talking. The longer she talked, the more the magic faded, along with his semi. Couldn’t she just stand there silently, smile at him with a dead woman’s face and let him pretend?

He gestured to where he'd left money out on the nightstand. He didn't know what he wanted, but it should be enough to cover the standard fare. He’d be content just looking at her if he was honest.

“We can play by ear. You have money, all is fine.”

She wore a green dress, a sequined affair that was way too short, too trashy. He hated green. Natasha would never have worn such a thing. He made a haphazard gesture. “Could you?”

The words were barely out of his mouth before her hand was on the back zipper. She shrugged the thin material over the pale, creamy skin of her shoulders. It fell limply to her hips. She wasn't wearing a bra. He immediately averted his eyes to the floor. The erection was back. He felt ashamed.

“You can look.”

Christ, that accent. He lifted his gaze, contrite and aroused at the same time.

She wore black patent heels which were scuffed and worn. Her ankles were slim and her legs went on forever, pale and perfect and nothing like the broken, twisted things that had been peeking out from under the upturned gurney in the med bay. He was seized with the impulse to buy her a new pair of shoes.

“You don't like?” Not-Natasha pouted at him, hands on her hips. “What are you waiting for?”

He grabbed a spare shirt from the end of the bed. “Put this on.”

“What are you, my father? I can call you daddy if you want.”

“Please don't do that.”

She slipped the shirt around her shoulders and fastened it with a single button in the middle. It still looked obscene. It made him think of how Nat would have looked the morning after if he'd ever brought her home. He sighed at the thought. He was now truly hard in his slacks.

That seemed to be the invitation she had been waiting for. She straddled his lap, long and nimble fingers undoing his fly. This was the point of no return, he thought. He could stop her now, politely explain that he’d made a terrible mistake. He’d pay her for her wasted time and see her out. But before he knew it, she’d worked his penis out of his pants. It had been so long, years and years, since someone had touched him. She moved her hand up and down in steady, rhythmic strokes. Up close, he could see that the roots of her hair were a dark brown, the dye job a little patchy. He closed his eyes. Then he opened them again and pulled his head back. He had to look at her. She met his eyes and quirked the corner of her mouth in a tiny, knowing smile. He came with a whimper, splattering her hand and the front of her shirt.

Less than thirty seconds. Bruce’s cheeks burned with embarrassment.

“Don't worry,” Not-Natasha said, climbing off his lap. “I take it as compliment.”

She walked towards the bedroom door.

“You're leaving?”

She hadn’t even taken money. Was he a pity job?

“No,” she said. “Only wash my hands.”

After a while she reappeared in the door. He drank in the sight of her, lithe limbs and bright eyes. She sat down next to him on the bed and took his face in her hands. He wanted to kiss her really badly. Would it contravene any secret code? He stayed carefully still. But she only removed his glasses, setting them on the nightstand next to the wad of cash. She ran her hand over the back of his neck. She pulled his head down into her lap. He squinted up at a set of ample breasts.

“You are tired,” she said. It seemed like the most profoundly true thing anyone had said to him in a long time. “Sleep.”

“Will you talk to me?” he asked her. Her fingers were running through his hair. It felt so intimate. It was almost too much to bear. “Will you talk to me in Russian?”

Nat had never spoken to him in Russian. He'd always fantasized that one day she might. It wasn't the main reason he'd learned the language, although secretly he'd been hoping for a chance to impress her with it.

Not-Natasha talked to him in a low, soothing tone. He caught snippets of words, something about a boat and the sea. His mind filled in the blanks. Weariness crept over him. There was something both hypnotic and comforting about being held and touched. At one point she told him to close his eyes. He understood that much. He complied.

When he woke up, it was dawn. The room was freezing. His semen-stained shirt lay folded neatly at the end of the bed. The money was gone from the nightstand.

* * *

Late Autumn in Moscow transitioned from mild to freezing in an instant. The flat he'd rented had inadequate heating, one of those old water-based systems that was both a health hazard and egregiously inefficient.

Bruce bought a pair of fingerless gloves and a space heater. He kept working. When he wasn't decrypting mostly useless files, a task that had taken on a monotony that was almost meditative, he was trawling through the quagmires of conspiracy theory bullshit online. Unlike Steve however, Bruce knew where to look for people who had information that needed to fly below the radar, and he could automate his searches enough to get through vast amounts of sophistry.

On the rare occasion the scripts turned up something worth investigating further, he would attempt to cultivate contacts from behind a screen and pseudonym. Most acquaintances were weirdos, an array of dark web individuals who had nothing more useful to offer him than a first-hand insight into a range of mental illnesses.

Apart from this one guy.

He seemed psychologically stable for one, which was, if not reassuring, then at least affable to communicate with. Whether he could yield anything useful on Hydra was another matter.

He claimed to be a former intelligence officer with the Sokovian Armed Forces, a small military branch of an even smaller former Soviet country. Bruce was wary about the idea of getting played by someone who would feed him what he wanted to hear. Their dialog went to and fro. His counterpart, ‘H’ by denomination, unveiled bits and bobs of semi-truths that were on the edge of the wider public’s knowledge. What made the penny drop for Bruce was when H name-dropped the Zimniy Soldat program. He would not indulge Bruce into more beyond the name, and Bruce thought it best if he played dumb in order to avoid giving away what he and Steve had uncovered in that bunker. But the fact that he’d heard of it at all leant some credence to the idea that the rest of his intel might come from a legitimate source.

Bruce agreed to a blind date.

* * *

Novi Grad in Sokovia was an eleven hour train journey from Moscow. Bruce took the overnight, splurging on a second class ticket which gave him a bunk in a shared cabin. His cabin mate smelled like onions and a round too many at the local bar, but at least wasn’t particularly talkative.

He'd gotten used to the ramshackle former-USSR type aesthetic, a bleak 1970's idea of modernity painted haphazardly across a historical backdrop. Novi Grad wasn’t the prettiest holdover after the Iron Curtain had fallen, but neither was it the worst. Bruce decided he liked it, if only from an architectural perspective.

They were meeting in the center of the historic district, a crumbling cafeteria that had seen its glory days when Stalin had been a bright star on a communist red backdrop. Brown icy sludge was underfoot as Bruce slipped inside, his coat wrapped tightly around him. Outside the sky had grown thick and heavy with impending hail.

He didn't know what he was expecting. Part of him pictured a man in a fedora and a trench coat like in a 1950's private dick movie. A bigger part of him — the part that reminded him of all his gone-bad experiences with the US army — imagined a squadron of Sokovian militia ready to take him out, some sting operation because he'd gotten too close to the truth.

The man who sat down in front of him in his small plastic booth was startlingly ordinary. Perhaps a few years younger than Bruce, he was clean-shaven with a neat haircut and a pleasant, almost-handsome face. He wore a parka and clutched a cup of hot coffee which he wrapped his hands around as though warming them against the cold. There was a folder tucked under his arm. He placed it on the seat next to him.

“Dr Banner?”

Bruce frowned. Clearly he hadn’t been as clever and anonymous as he’d hoped. The man laughed and continued to talk in lightly accented English. “My apologies, how rude of me. But I would not be good in my profession if I couldn’t find out who you are. Your identity was not difficult to track.”

“That's disappointing.” Bruce said. Caution was required here.

The man smiled an honest, open looking smile. “Here, a trade. So you do not feel disadvantaged. My name is Helmut Zemo.”

“Your real name?” Bruce asked warily.

“Yes. I would gain little if I lied to you now. The truth is better. For both parties.”

“And this?” Bruce nodded to the folder.

“Yours if you want it. It is everything I have.”

“On-” He broke off. He didn’t want to say Hydra out loud. Walls had ears. These here more than others. “On our mutual friends.”

“Indeed.”

“You’ll hand it over? To someone you don’t know? Forgive me, but I’ve made the experience that if something is too good to be true, it most always is.”

“Oh, but I know who you are,” Zemo said. “And what you are. I also know that you will not go to Director Fury to report on our meeting. Him, I would not give this. You, yes.”

Bruce ventured into tricky territory. “Not a fan of SHIELD?”

Zemo's throat bobbed, the muscles in his neck constricting. For a moment he no longer resembled the friendly man who Bruce had been sitting opposite of. He looked different. Hateful. But then he rearranged his face back into that smooth, pleasant mask and whatever grudges he harbored towards Fury sunk back into a distant place.

“Do what you want with what you are given,” Zemo said. “Arm yourself with information. Share it with your friend, the Captain, if you want to.”

Bruce made a small noise, surprise and horror in one, but Zemo only laughed. “Come now, I told you. For me, this is not difficult.”

“And,” Bruce said, because there was always a catch. “In return?”

Zemo took a long sip of his coffee. “It is always good to have friends.” He slapped his thighs with the palm of his hands and smiled again. “And so, a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Please enjoy your bedtime reading. And perhaps we will see each other again.”

“Thank you,” Bruce said, because he had the distinct impression that this was not a person he wanted to make a bad impression with.

“You are welcome,” Zemo said. “Please wait before you leave. It would not be good for us to be seen exiting together.”

“I wasn't followed,” Bruce said quietly. “I checked.”

Zemo zipped his parka up to the neck, pulling his hood up as he stood. “You did not check well enough then, Dr Banner. I wish you a pleasant stay. Good day.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which the plot thickens and Bruce gives Tony a run for his money in the unhealthy coping mechanisms olympics.
> 
>  
> 
> [Don't look back.](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/20/20.jpg)


	21. Chapter 21

“Morning,” Steve said and bobbed his head in a nod. He fished phone and portemonnaie from his pocket and laid them in one of the set-up plastic boxes. “How's it going, Jones?”

Edgar Jones was the doorman guarding the first checkpoint at entry point B1. Steve had been trying to talk up a conversation for the past two weeks. Didn’t cost nothing to be polite was what his ma had always said, a lesson Steve had carried with him from well before his fateful encounter with Dr Erskine. While courteousness hadn’t been the defining trait earning him the spot on Project Rebirth, it had definitely been part of the vision old Erskine had seen in him back then. He knew the way Nick and Maria and the rest of their staff barged past Edgar Jones in the mornings as though he was part of the furniture, barely a word out of their mouths. That wasn’t a way to treat a dedicated employee.

Steve was all about the little guy. He made it a point to indulge in small talk. The weather, last night’s game, whatever. It wasn’t about the subject, it was about saying, ‘Hey, I acknowledge you.’

Jones for his part either wasn’t much of a talker or maybe he just found chit chat with Captain America intimidating. He only ever shrugged, took Steve’s phone and personal belongings and dumped them in a lockbox before waving him through.

Just as he added his watch to the box, Steve’s phone began to buzz. Phones weren’t allowed aboard the ship for security reasons. There was a no-documentation clause and a nasty disturb signal to boot. Whatever malfunction had pushed Fury’s hand to allow Tony on board had common electronics fried within a ten meter radius of the vessel. You wanted your pictures and messages intact, you left your phone safely ensconced with Jones.

“Just a second, buddy,” Steve said and reached for the mobile.

It buzzed a missed call alert. Signal was spotty this close to the ship. Whoever had called must have gone straight to voicemail. Steve tapped his way through the Missed Calls screen. +7. Russia, then.

There was only one person who could call him from that part of the world. Bruce. Bruce with news on Bucky. There were new clues on Bucky. There was a breakthrough, that one integral file finally unearthed and translated and Bruce called to give Steve the good news. _I know where he is_ , he could already hear Bruce’s voice over the phone. _Talked to him, he’s doing fine. Waiting to catch up on old times with his old friend. Have something to jot his number down?_

“I need to take that call,” Steve said and actively ignored the scowl settling on Jones’ face. He turned around, scrolling down to redial. The phone’s clock read 08:32AM. He did a mental count, adding on the hours of the time difference. Early evening for Bruce. He needed to get that call out now before entombing himself on that ship for the rest of the day. Was it too late to call in sick? Captain America on sick leave… would anyone even buy that?

Pressing the phone to his ear he waited for the dialing sound. It rang, hesitantly at first, once, twice—

“Hey!”

Someone jabbed the phone out of his hand. Steve whirled around and there was Tony, all teeth and tan and insincerity.

“Chop chop, Cap,” he tattled. “We’re on the clock.”

Steve let out a hiss of air and congratulated himself on his self-restraint of not putting Tony's head through a wall.

“Hand that back, please,” he said between gritted teeth. “It’s urgent.”

“Urgent?” Tony raised an eyebrow. “Who could you get an urgent call from? The nursing home?”

And just like that the anger at Tony blossomed out anew. At being forced to call that terrible decision (”Close it, Natasha, he’s not making it back!”), at having to shoulder alone the war of wars to pay penance for it, at forsaking his vow to Erskine for Fury’s choking collar and leash. And now, now that there was a faint glimpse of a past life in sight, that good life before the gridlock in the Arctic Sea, Tony Stark came trundling in and trampled it into the dust.

“Russkey, huh?” Tony asked. He was swiping animatedly at the screen. “You a mole or something? Captain Moskvá now?”

Steve held out his hand. He said firmly, “I’m not asking twice, Tony.”

That wiped the smirk right off of Tony’s face. He grimaced, and suddenly prying at Steve’s inbox seemed the last thing on his mind. For just a moment one of his facial tics resurfaced, a quick succession of eye blinks. Then he cleared his throat — a clean cut — and hurled Steve’s phone into the waiting blue plastic box on Edgar Jones’ table.

“Later,” Tony said. The ridicule in his voice was replaced by a cold, smooth rigidity. “You’re on my time here, comrade.”

“Okay, Tony,” Steve said. He didn’t want to engage, not here, not in front of audience. They stood in that silent Mexican standoff until Jones, who had barely ever spoken two words to Steve, lit up with a wide, friendly grin and broke the muteness.

“I’ll need phone and watch, Mr Stark.” And then, “Catch the game last night?”

Steve watched incredulously as Tony did a seamless transition from questionable mental soundness to sophisticated NFL enthusiast. He launched into an animated diatribe about football with Jones, blanking Steve out from the tableau.

“We’ll see about that next week, Mr Stark,” Jones said as they passed through. “No way the Patriots’ dry spell hasn’t ended by then.”

Tony waved, flashing his Hollywood white teeth.

“See you later, Jones,” Steve said brightly, like it was a competition now. He followed Tony past the checkpoint. They walked down the corridor, the laid-back breakup giving way to the usual troubled in-between they shared when no one was looking.

“Jerk move to put the guy on duty when you’re around,” Tony said eventually. “Even for Fury.”

“What do you mean?”

“You're for real, aren't you? Jones' son fought in the war. One of your red shirts. Canon fodder in an episode of The Thrilling Adventures of Captain America. Never came home. He’s on the SI disaster relief list. I checked.” He looked Steve up and down, the way a condescending elder might. “Guess you can't be expected to remember the names of all the kids you got killed, can you?” 

* * *

SHIELD didn’t slack in the caveat department. There was another checkpoint after Jones’ station, a triple security scan made up of retinal, fingerprint and voice verification. Steve missed the days when locks were locks and keys were keys. Steve missed a lot of things.

Their destination was the same one since Steve had been assigned as Tony’s chaperone. While Tony took up station at his computer terminal Steve made his way over to his usual corner. He glanced up at the security camera mounted on the far-off wall as though someone might see the spiritless expression on his face and finally alert the higher-ups of this grand-scale absurdity. No help came. He opened his sketchbook and laid out pencil and rubber, flipping through the pages which were filled with a mess of half-finished images. Most were of the wars, both he’d fought in, the one before and the one after. Lately, scenes tended to blend, some more than others. SS Sturmmänner side by side with Chitauri foot soldiers, german jackboots on Manhattan streets, hakenkreuz-blazoned Leviathans in the blitzkrieg against Holland and Belgium.

There were memories from the ship too. War Machine’s back in the dim dark of a corridor, Rhodes’ broad frame immortalized in graphite HB. Tony, emaciated and gaunt in his Chitauri rags. A close up of Natasha's face that night they'd all sat in this very room. The corner of her mouth was turned up in a knowing smirk, her hair blazing red in a stream of fake artistic sunlight. That one he'd done on the road with pencil and oil pastels. He’d thought about asking Bruce if he wanted to have it, the picture having sat burning a hole in his carry-on when they’d parted ways at the airport.

In the end he hadn’t offered.

He looked at the pencil in his hand and the blank page, then at Tony and back to the creamy, unmarked paper. All the time they’d spent in this room and Tony hadn’t once shown the vaguest interest in how Steve was working off his daily hours. He’d been hesitant the first time he’d found himself sketching the outlines of Tony’s face, a peculiar fear of being caught in the act.

But Tony had never said a thing, had never peeked at Steve’s little book of sinful secrets, and so unwittingly became the spark of many a doodle. Even now the slopes and curves of a head and shoulders emerged on canvas, thin lines, thicker ones, light and shadow playing off one another. Before Steve knew it Tony’s eyes stared up from graphite smudges. One more pencil stroke turned them into Howard’s and the look turned from scornful to cherishing and back to judgmental and...

Steve flipped the paper over.

Another never-to-be-finished skeleton joined the ranks of tainted memory and half-realized ghosts.

It was better that way.

* * *

The glowing red numbers on the digital wall clock refused to change any faster despite Steve begging them to. Chaperone duty with Tony always dragged. Today he could feel his butt wear a hole in that damn chair.

What would that call from Russia have said? Best scenario, Bruce had tracked down Bucky. Podium finish, the Winter Soldier wasn’t James Buchanan Barnes at all, just an unfortunate look-alike. Way down Steve’s wish list came number three, that it was Bucky, but that he was long since dead, shot and buried in an unmarked hole in the countryside like so many other nameless assassins.

The other option — and he was ashamed that it had taken him this long to think of the possibility — was that Bruce was in trouble and turning to him for help. And what a good little helper Steve was, sitting his butt sore and losing his mind about what if’s and could have been’s. If he was quick and unobtrusive about it…

No, Fury would have his head if he found out. The first decree of SHIELD’s Ten Commandments was that Tony mustn’t be left to his own devices, at no point and never and praised be the Lord.

But the staff at the control points was due a shift swap and the guy taking over for Jones was a Captain America fan through and through. He could be there and back and have his call to Moscow before Tony even looked up from whatever he was doing.

“I'm going to the can,” Steve announced before he could talk himself out of it.

There was a dull thud from Tony’s workplace. Tony, for the last two hours buried elbow-deep in a console that was hooked up to some of Iron Man’s innards, glanced up from his creative crisis.

“Bad timing. The worst.”

To emphasize his claim Iron Man suddenly gave off a sound that reminded Steve of a german Panzer tank with a flat battery. What followed was a mess of distorted rendition of a bass-heavy rock song. Even Tony worried his teeth together in suffering.

They’d had bouts of defective audio before, the highlight being a maxed-out volume loop of a song called Paradise City which had not only nearly cost the two of them their drumheads, but also everyone else unlucky enough to be on duty that day. It had taken Tony the better part of an hour to shut up the overzealous lead from crying out for freedom, justice and the place where the grass was green and the girls were pretty.

That evening Steve had crossed out Guns ‘N Roses from the notebook he kept his catch-up-on activities in. The band had been recommended to him by a guy who talked at a Veteran’s Affairs funded class Steve sometimes attended. Sam. Sam Wilson or Williamson or something of that sort. Headed the Chirauri Veterans PTSD group.

Would be good for morale if Steve showed his face from time to time, was what Sam Wilson or Williamson had told him when they’d first met, and knowing it was the right thing to do Steve had agreed to make an appearance once a month. A lousy promise, because the last time he’d been sat in a classroom full of men and women and praised God and country had been well before his trip to space.

“No, no, no can do!” Tony was saying over what threatened to become another Heavy Metal concert. “You need to drain the lizard, go for it.” He nodded conspiratorially at the wall-mounted camera. “If you don’t tell, I won’t either. That thing’s busted since last week.”

Steve forced a smile onto his lips, like what he was hearing was too good to be true. “I won’t,” he said. “But I’ll be a few minutes. Try not to…” He paused, thinking how to best phrase it. “Try not to cause trouble. Okay?”

* * *

Donald Coakley did not have a dead son or a dartboard with Steve’s face hanging on his kitchen wall, grimy with years of finger marks and coffee spills. Coakley was happy enough to oblige good ol' Cap and happier still to keep it under his hat.

“Loose lips sink ships,” Coakley told him and passed him the phone.

It took forever to boot up. Steve paced up and down, remembering how Bucky used to crack jokes about Suzy Roberts once he’d gotten over her. He thought about Tony, pantomiming zipping his lips shut and telling him Fury was never going to find out they didn’t hold hands on a port-a-potty.

Signal. Finally. He pressed CALL.

“ _Zdrastvutye…_ ” a female voice greeted him, and Steve didn't have to speak Russian to know that he'd gone straight to voicemail. He tried three more times in case the line was engaged, but no dice.

He looked at the time on the phone. He was already pushing the boundaries of what was an acceptable length for a bathroom break. He handed back the phone with an overcompensation of thank you’s and stepped through the metal detector preceding the last electronic barrier.

“Steven Grant Rogers,” he said crisply. He put his thumb against the fingerprint scanner and leaned forward, pressing his forehead against the contraption that would verify his retinal data.

Nothing. He wiped his palm against his pants. Of all possible moments, technology had chosen the worst one to bitch and whine.

“S-T-E-V-E-N G-R-A-N-T R-O-G-E-R-S.”

Nothing, again. Steve looked over his shoulder, expecting to see Maria Hill with a big BUSTED poster in her hands. Instead there was only the perplexed face of Donald Coakley.

“Must be broke,” he said. He fished a plastic card out of his pocket and came up to Steve. “Here, let’s try this.”

The card went into the slot and got the same reaction Steve had elicited before. Nothing.

“That’s odd,” Coakley said, but tried again regardless. By the time he gave up and declared he had to call it in, Steve’s stomach had already sunk into his toes.

This wasn’t odd.

This was Tony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's going down.
> 
> [Superheroes aren't the only ones fighting wars.](http://chaedandspacelaska.com/21/21.html)


	22. Chapter 22

Contrary to her fretful assumption, Stark Industries hadn’t fallen apart like cracked flowers on a wreath just because she had taken the weekend off. The world kept on spinning, the calendars filling up, and on Monday her assistant even made notice of her tan. Her skin looked great! Was she using a new product?

Pepper _did_ feel rejuvenated. The bags under her eyes were gone and so was the ache in her upper back and that little pinch just between the shoulder blades. She’d eaten, she’d slept and Tony’s no-work policy had done wonders for her mental peace.

She twirled the small pink cocktail umbrella in her fingers, the one Tony had snuck in her hair when he’d spirited her away. She’d kept it, smuggling it back home in her purse. It was silly, she felt like a giddy schoolgirl about it, fantasizing about her prom crush. But the umbrella had made it back to LA regardless and it now resided safely in her desk drawer, right next to her Sisleya L’Intégral skin creme and the lucky charm pendant Uncle Morgan had gifted her when she’d turned ten. It was a plastic four clover leaf entangled in a horseshoe and a heart. It had a stamped inscription on the back that read _WHAT A LUCKY GIRL._ She’d never had the heart to toss it, especially not after Uncle Morgan had gotten his big C diagnosis and died of pancreatic cancer four months later.

But she didn’t want to think about that. She twirled Tony’s pink umbrella some more. The uneasy feeling had vanished. It had probably only been mild indigestion. By the time they’d stepped inside the house it had been gone. Tony had refused to return her phone until Monday rolled around, but then he’d gone back out into the gym to catch up on his physio exercises and she’d been left aimlessly zapping through television channels.

She'd gotten stuck on Access Hollywood _,_ where Natalie Morales was updating the audience on what went on in the entertainment industry and the newest celeb slip-ups. Living with Tony for so long, Pepper had grown a thick skin over the years. However, it still felt like a sharp intrusion into privacy every time she glimpsed footage of the two of them. She'd sat up straight on the couch, a burning pain in her lower chest, almost like acid reflux. _Hope_ _it’s not that ulcer again,_ she'd thought distractedly.

The picture had been a pixelated zoom-in of her and Tony on the beach. Tony was putting lotion on her shoulders. He didn’t have sunburn yet, so the snapshot must have been taken on their first day there. The annotations were mostly positive. _Pepperony Enjoying Lazy Friday. Look At That Body, She’s Almost Fifty_ — she had barely turned forty-two! — and _Things You Can Do When You’re Among Forbes’ Five_. But then came the less nice comments. _How Much Longer Will He Rest On Hi_ s _Laurels?_ and _does the suit fit the paunch?_ with the worst one being _IRON MAN TURNED LAZY BUM, IF WAR MACHINE COULD SEE._ Beyond tasteless. Natalie Morales blanked them out in order to go on and harass the next victim. Pepper had shut off the TV then, telling herself not to let inanities like Access Hollywood ruin the last of her time off.

Tony would climb back into Iron Man when he was ready and not before. He’d taken the first step, back when they’d flown out to the ship together. She’d found it odd that he’d even bothered to lug the suitcase with him after Fury had made it strikingly clear that he wasn’t allowed to take it in, and she’d found it even odder that he'd simply handed it off at the front gates. It stood in the anteroom at home now, red and gold and propped up against the umbrella stand like a pair of dirty shoes. Although Tony continued to spend plenty of time in his garage, she knew for a fact that he didn’t devote himself to Iron Man. He’d found new interest in that vintage car of his, but not in the suits. He’d taken Happy down to the bottom level once, presumably to get that garbage disposal checked out, but that had been it.

“Ms Potts?”

Pepper looked up. Her secretary stood in the doorway. She let the little umbrella disappear into the drawer.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry for the disturbance, ma’am,” Stacey said. “But there's a Mr Fury on—” She winced as she touched her ear piece. “Sorry sir, yes. That’s a _Director_ Fury on the line.”

“SHIELD,” Pepper supplemented helpfully. “Please tell Nick—” She emphasized his first name with a quiet scorn. “—that I'll call him back when I'm available. Which is not currently.”

Stacey forwarded that. Pepper could hear Fury’s tinny voice even over the earpiece, but she waved Stacey out of the room. He could yell all he wanted. The most he’d get from her was a lawsuit for verbally traumatizing her assistant and a bill to pay for the reconstruction of her eardrum.

Pepper had far too much on her plate today to be dealing with another list of SHIELD demands. Last week Maria Hill had called to complain about Tony circumventing some network security system or other, couched in technobabble that she hadn’t understood and even less cared for. What did they expect of her? That she’d call up Tony from across the country, tell him to behave and assume he’d listen? She was his partner, not his babysitter. Besides, Tony always did what he wanted to do. She could win influence sometimes, but that was meticulous work which she refused to exert on SHIELD’s behalf.

Fury needed to learn boundaries when it came to her time. Government agency or no, he couldn’t just click his fingers and expect her to ask ‘How high?’ every time he said ‘Jump!’. She had other concerns besides that stupid Chitauri ship, which was turning into a far bigger headache than it was worth anyway. If it wasn’t for Tony's dogged insistence, she'd have ceded it over to them long ago. It was getting to the point where the company had lost revenue because her time was spent wrangling over a hunk of broken space junk.

Unfortunately, dealing with SHIELD was never easy, and it had become a lot less palatable since Phil Coulson’s untimely death. Object lesson, 2:45PM. First, ruckus outside her office. Interlude, the door. Then ruckus inside her office. Maria Hill strode in, with Pepper’s poor harried secretary trailing in her wake, wailing threats at Maria and excuses at Pepper.

“Ms Potts, I’m so very sorry! She just wouldn’t— oh, dear, I’ll call security!”

“It’s all right, Stacey,” Pepper said, even though it absolutely wasn’t. She waited until the door closed, then looked at Maria in annoyance. “You can’t do this. Nick blowing up my phone is one thing. This is overstepping the line with a broad jump.”

“I wouldn’t have to be here if you’d picked up,” Maria responded archly. “There’s a car waiting to take you to the airfield.”

The gall! What were they thinking? That she was a puppet waiting for its strings to be pulled for direction?

“There’s a receptionist waiting outside, Maria. She’ll be happy to make an appointment for you when—”

Maria burst her bubble.

“Tony’s gone dark.”

Dark? What did that even mean? She didn’t show it, but that feeling from the weekend? It was back again with a vengeance. So was the heartburn.

“He’s shut everything down,” Maria said. “Total systems override. Comms are disabled. Nobody gets in, nobody gets out. The ship’s sealed.”

“Wait.” Pepper put her hand up. “Tony's commandeered an alien spaceship? _Again?_ ” 

* * *

She instructed Stacey to cancel everything. An emergency had come up. While Maria waited outside — intruding into her office was one thing, but eavesdropping on company business was a hard no — Pepper looked at the screen of her phone. The number on speed dial was Tony’s. _Please pick up,_ she thought, but her finger kept hovering over the call button, haltingly. He wouldn’t pick up and she knew that without trying. One of Fury’s mandates was that Tony had to cede all personal electronic equipment at the entry. “It’s not too much of a bother,” Tony had told her back then. “There’s no service in there anyway. The ship will jabber everything that’s not the ship. I’ll text you the minute I get back out.” And he’d kept to that promise, unfailingly. Of course, there was no unread message waiting for her today.

She pressed CALL. The phone rang, five times, six. Then a click and the rerouting to Tony’s Jarvis-operated voice mail. “Mr Stark is currently unavailable. Would you like me to transmit a message?”

Pepper didn’t. She picked up her jacket and purse, and logged out of her SI account. She’d deliver that message personally.

_Goddamn you,Tony,_ she thought, and if she’d escaped that ulcer flaring up on Sunday night, she could see it draw level with her now. A sweeping irascibility bowled over her. Had the little pink umbrella meant nothing to him? Had their weekend meant nothing to him?!

She stepped into a car, into a plane, out of the plane, into another car, and finally, in front of Fury who looked like an apoplectic beetroot.

“I sure hope you've got an ace up your sleeve,” Fury spat. “A secret babyphone up his goddamned asshole for when everyone's favorite unstable amputee goes AWOL.”

“He's not AWOL,” she pointed out mildly. “He's in the ship.”

“He'll be in a black ops prison cell when this is over. That's a pledge.”

And that was the real danger here. They’d been pushing threatened lawsuits and missives on headed paper like ping pong balls from one camp to the other up until now. That was fine. That was the nobody-gets-hurt scenario. But if Tony got himself into trouble, real US military style go-directly-to-jail trouble, what was she going to be able to do against that? Without Jim, who’d been their only go-between to the army… the ulcer had just passed her at the finish line. It was here now, for the staying. Pepper clutched her stomach. She wondered whether SHIELD carried any on-hand Protonix. She would ask Maria later, she decided.

Fury went on listing Tony’s delicts and their consequences. It was a lot worse than just a shorted circuit. SHIELD were locked out of everything.

“As of this morning we've got two of our men in critical condition in the burns unit. Chitauri vessels have anti-boarding mechanisms built into them. For any attempt to force the doors, there’s an ugly countermeasure along with a lockdown of that sector of the ship.”

They went into the same hangar she’d been denied access to the first time she’d dropped off Tony. Beyond the check-in point waited an elevator. They rode down in silence, her, Fury, Maria, and two armed guards. Pepper was overcome with a sudden feeling of trepidation. What assurances did she have, realistically, to be back in her office tomorrow? Tomorrow, or any time after tomorrow? If Tony had gone rogue, if he’d actually lost it and flew off the handle, what could she, Virginia Potts, personally do about it? _You could disappear,_ a meek voice suggested, _right alongside him. One hole, two bodies. Desert’s big enough._

The elevator doors opened into a chilly hallway. The hallway ended in an emergency command station, stocked full of monitors and monitoring staff and a Coca-Cola vending machine in the back corner.

“What about the JARVIS system?” Maria asked.

So that what it was about. Pepper felt thrown back in time. And they had the nerve…! A thought came to her. Had Tony locked himself in… or was he locked in? Had Fury really gone so far as to stage this because he wanted the serial number to a computer program? But no, two of his men were in hospital over this — it couldn't be a set up.

She was furious again. “JARVIS is coded to obey Tony, unconditionally. You want access to the ship, he’s the only sure-fire way you won’t get it.”

And Tony had been paranoid, so very paranoid about even letting JARVIS get wind of the existence of another, possibly less functional version of himself. She still didn’t buy into the whole sentience nonsense, but she could well see how a corrupted iteration would cause serious technological problems. That was logical. That was believable. And it was reason enough to swat away Fury’s greedy fingers. JARVIS was off the table in terms of negotiation.

“I'm surprised you don't have Steve Rogers hammering away at the issue with his vibranium shield,” she said pejoratively.

Both Maria and Fury looked at her as though she’d made a tasteless joke.

“Steve Rogers was Tony’s chaperone, on Tony’s personal request. Quite incidentally he happened to leave his post this morning, shortly before the lockdown commenced. He’s in interrogation now, and that’s where he stays until he starts singing the right tunes.”

It was like a punch to her already revolting stomach. The dreams, Tony’s neurotic behavior towards anything related to Captain America… she’d assumed he was, little by little, facing down the past, memories and experiences only now surfacing, finally ready to be processed. That’s what his therapists said. Just another step of coming to terms with what had happened to him. She needn’t worry. He was making progress.

_Oh Tony,_ she thought, her heart pumping in staccato rhythm. _Just what have you done?  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Well, that was a short lived holiday.](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/22/22.jpg)
> 
> Shit, meet fan.


	23. Chapter 23

Just this final gig, two more skimpy weeks tops and it would all be over. Tony had it neatly laid out, had hatched the idea on a sun lounger during his Caribbean getaway with Pep last week.

He’d surrender the damn ship. Fury could have it. Once he extracted whatever bits of Jarvis were still spliced into the Chit OS, he’d be out of here with a wink and a wave and pull the curtains on it all.

What had precipitated this mid-set change? For one, he’d gotten to the point where he ate more pills than Elvis. Just yesterday he’d had a spack attack in the shower — a good thirty minutes of cold water therapy and J and his breathing exercises later, the only thing that got him out of the gutter had been half a bottle of Vitamin V. Thank God Pepper hadn’t been around for that one. They’d talked later (she was in New York for the week) and he’d said everything was golden and zonked out with the phone in his hand.

 _Sweet dreams,_ she’d texted back and sent him a pic of the Big Apple skyline which was visible from their suite in Stark Tower. A fair bit of lace and leg and coverlet had been part of that photo and if he hadn’t followed up the pill fest with a second round of Twinkies he would have beat off to the thought of Pep’s alabaster legs instead of bending over the porcelain bowl, nursing a headache the size of New Hampshire.

Being back on the ship had turned out to be A Most Terrible Idea. Only J kept him here, whatever the thing was that was left of J, the thing he could under no circumstances let Fury get his hands on.

He’d wipe the systems clean as a whistle and leave a little parting gift for good ol’ Nick One Eye. That was the plan. Four years had been enough to come up with contingencies A to Z and all the way back up the alphabet. Fury could have his damn ship. _After_ Tony made sure that the most he got out of it was yesterday’s price at the junkyard. Square deal.

And with that he’d own up to Pep. He’d tell her about busting SHIELD and about Pennywise the Dancing Clown down in the basement and about Rhodey and the frightmares. He’d fess up about Iron Man too, that he loved his suits but that he’d rather book another three-month getaway in a cave in the Afghan Noshaq before stepping back into an armor and risk flying too close to the sun. He’d tell her that what he really wanted was to get back into R&D, to take some weight off her shoulders with SI and start catching up on the life he’d missed instead of speeding by at sunrise.

Truth was, he was ready for that happy ending. He was ready to ENJOY THIS ON A GREAT DAY, to put it in dad’s words.

Currently though, he was les-miserables, thirsty as a dry road.

You learned about thirst in space and you learned not to be all casual about it. There had been no vending machines the way they were now neatly recorded on SHIELD’s accessible location pictographs. The Coke machine had been out of commission.

And even if Tony had had access to John Pemberton’s secret Coca Cola formula, the best he could have done was wipe his ass with it. The human body could go three to four days without water, depending on conditions. Broiling heat, cold climate and sitting in a Chitauri cell stripped of clothes and dignity, all of the above ramped down that estimate a bit. But three days, maybe four… you’d get by. You’d have to stretch it thin, as thin as the skin on a drum, but you’d make do. You’d _have_ to make do because it was either that or a stroll towards the light at the end of that tunnel and you’d have a hard time strolling on legs that were one big bucking charley horse. And those, lads, were empirical values. Contemplated and tested by yours truly.

But back to the story of thirst. Chitauri cell. Birthday suit. A hella case of the jitters and three to four days on a strict fast. Tony would have drunk his own piss as early as day two and a half, only by day two and a half he’d stopped pissing and had gone on being in the full throes of cramping up like a pretzel.

The Chit must have smelled something was rotten in the State of Denmark. In the early hours of day three they started the Rejuvenation Therapy. To this day he didn’t know what the thing had been they’d given him, only that it hadn’t been water or a strawed coconut. Something slimy and sticky and tasting at best like rotten oil. Not that Tony had been able or particularly inclined to communicate his distaste by those early hours of day three. It had been more of a straightforward matter of pry jaw open and hope it took the right corner and landed in his stomach and not in his lungs.

Food took longer to negotiate, but that was okay. You could go a lot longer without food than you could without water and let’s say it true blue: those love handles _had_ started to form, even if Pepper had never admitted a thing. But not to worry, the Chitauri 62-Day Slim Fast had provided remedy. One belt hole in the first ten days! And once the pounds began to tumble they dropped faster than panties on prom night. This unbelievable success surprised not only Tony but also his gratuitous hosts who were kind enough to enrich his menu with the one thing he’d come to loathe like poison: sludge.

Sludge was unbearable in taste and limitedly digestible and the docs had diagnosed extensive mucosal scarring back on Earth, a souvenir that Tony would likely never get rid of again. So rotten oil and sludge. Combined they kept him afloat and weak enough for the Chit to play Operation without him being a spoilsport. That had put the final nail in the coffin, ironically their own. He’d become sick, the plague had descended, lights out, suckers.

Over time he’d forgotten what real water even tasted like. Jarvis helped him synthesize something that was better than the oil but they never quite got that Nestle quality down, not until Rhodey had come and given him a factory-fresh bottle. And then he’d gone and barfed it all up right alongside the chocolate fudge protein bar. He hadn’t done the following, but it had been there, screaming at the forefront of his mind: Had it not been for Bruce and Rhodey and their outright mortified expressions he would have knelt down on his two knees, on his one arm and on his one stump and given the whole endeavor a second try, right off the floor. Doesn’t get more honest than that, folks. Not suited for all audiences and children under thirteen years old. But Tony had done it anyway. Because Tony was a survivor.

Presently Tony was also goddamn thirsty, no need to stretch this into Homer’s Odyssey. He took off the headphones and placed them on the terminal. He needed a break. His Chitauri was a far cry from fluent and he was getting fed up with looking at the equivalent of a Windows error message popping up every five minutes. If the suit went off on another audio loop he was bound to throw a fit anyway. Better take that break, shake out those legs a little, shake out that brain a bit.

He gave Iron Man a pat on the shoulder. “Don’t you go off anywhere, bud. I’ll be right back.”

Steve was apparently still stuck on the throne too because it was ten past and the Captain America corner was missing one Captain America. They’d slap hands in front of the port-a-potty, Tony decided. He’d take care of that first before grabbing a cold-pop from the vending machine. He palmed his pocket, fingering lose change. Could probably pass for an extra Mars. He was about to sign a contract for an ad campaign with Astronaut Stark, so he might as well get used to the taste.

He got to his feet, stretched his back until that tight spot cracked back into place and then off it was to Candyland. Maybe he’d miss Steve and they wouldn’t have a meeting of minds in front of the loo and Steve would go on and crap in his stretchy leggings when he returned on scene and thought he’d lost Tony on the Titanic. What a story that would be, Cap fessing up to Padre Fury! _He wouldn’t hold my hand while I went on the pee-pee pot, so I had to go all-alone, ohoh!_

See how well that self-therapy was going? Tony was practically healed.

Incidentally, he was also quite fucked. Figuratively and otherwise.

“What the?”

The ship could be cranky sometimes, no need to press the panic button right away. He stepped away from the door, then stepped forward. That should have triggered the release mechanism. He tried again. Same difference.

Okay. How about a compromise? _Hover_ over that panic button. Step back, step forward. Nothing.

Tony knocked on the door. “Not funny,” he said loudly. His voice was not quivering like weed in water. “You hear me? This isn’t funny! Open up!”

There was a bang from behind. He whirled around. His next thought was in italics as though it came straight out of a comic book, speech bubble and caps-lock and exclamation mark all-inclusive: _Here comes the bogeyman! THE BOGEYMAN!_

Iron Man had fallen over. Its eye slits blinked happily and suddenly the room filled with deafening cranky audio. Tony groaned in exasperation, rushed over. How he regretted loading the Disney Classic Collection on Mark VII’s hard drive! He didn’t even _like_ Pinocchio.

“Enough sing-song,” he said and pushed ENTER on the Reboot tab on the terminal. The noise subsided. God, those bugs just kept piling up.

“Stop scaring me, pal,” he muttered, setting the suit upright again. “I got a heart condition. Don’t forget that.”

Iron Man had no opinion on Tony’s cardiac plight. Iron Man had fairly little opinion on anything these days. After being fritzed by the Chit OS and clawed to pieces by the resident creepy-crawlies he’d had gone one up and stripped it of everything but its robotic pantyhose. There was a pile of red and gold plating to the right and another considerably smaller stack to the left, mostly gimmicks that ate up much needed processing power.

He looked over at Steve’s corner, his anger perking up by Iron Man’s Disney In Concert rendition. That jerkoff! What did he expect Tony to do? Sit around and twiddle his thumbs until Captain America was done toilet texting? Maybe he’d stop by on the way back, get a mocha out of the coffee dispenser, get held up in small talk with Jesus Christ himself. All while Tony was stuck here going thirsty as a camel, going up the walls because he couldn’t stop himself from drawing parallels between this lock-up and _that_ lock-up.

He took a deep breath, squeezed his eyes shut and counted to ten. He reached ten and went for twenty. Thirty. Forty-six.

Fuck Steve! Fuck the therapists! They just mounted Pepper’s wallet like a moosehead but therapy did jack-shit in the face of real, in-the-flesh panic attacks. He opened his eyes, big bulging saucers and looked for garbage chutes and dead Russian contortionists. He pressed his hand against his chest. It felt like someone had put his heart in the clamp and squeezed down. It hammered like a ram against his ribs. His thoughts went as haywire as his ticker.

_It’s the heart the heart you have a jammer those Stark rocket splinters are finally doing you in right here today on the ship inspacealone—_

Tony looked up. Tony did not have a heart attack. He sat there, staggered, questioning his lucidity as Iron Man’s head bobbed suddenly forward and the perfectly clear voice of Jiminy Cricket said, “A fine conscience I turned out to be! Oh, buck up, son. It could be worse. Be cheerful! Take it easy! Come on now, see? It stopped raining already.”

He dropped his hand from his chest. He craned his neck to catch a glimpse up at the terminal. He craned his neck to get a good view of Iron Man. He swallowed dryly.

Then he walked over to the terminal and pressed REBOOT. Jiminy Cricket fell silent. The panic attack had been scared away. Steve and his diabolical plans were momentarily dismissed.

Tony leaned in closer.

“Jarv?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Knock knock.
> 
>  
> 
> [Who's there?](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/23/23.html)


	24. Chapter 24

“My story won’t change no matter how often you ask me,” Steve said. “I’m not the bad guy here, Brock, and you know it.”

Brock Rumlow was the head of SHIELD’s STRIKE team, a fellow built like a linebacker. He was the kind of guy you wanted on your side or on no side at all.

“You could be the Pope and I wouldn’t let you go, Cap. Orders are orders.”

And Rumlow’s were to keep Captain America cooped up in an interview room while every hand on deck tried cracking a way into that Chitauri ship. Steve hadn’t resisted when Rumlow and his boys had strolled up and asked him to accompany them. By that point the ship’s entrance had been buzzing with staff doing their best to lift the lockdown and Steve had gone willingly in order to prevent a scene.

He’d been prepared to have his ass chewed out for leaving Tony to his shenanigans. As expected, the best sound-proofing in the world didn’t damper Director Fury’s sonority when he’d finally come in. How could he and was he out of his mind and what had come over him to go for a walk in the middle of his fucking shift? Not only had Fury bought shit of Steve’s alibi, he’d gone right around and confiscated the burner phone too.

That had been around five or six hours ago, five or six long-winded hours in which he’d sat stiffly in the bolted down chair of the interview room, looking in turns at Rumlow and the two-way mirror on the wall.

“I’m not the bad guy,” he said again.

“I know,” Rumlow said. “You’re the Pope, Cap. Ain’t no one as proper as you. That’s why you get to be sitting here chatting with me instead of being lined up in the crosshairs like your pal Stark.”

* * *

“Director Fury? We have him. He’s inbound from Moscow, scheduled to land at JFK in four twenty-five. The passport is issued for a Joseph Brown, but the database checks confirm it’s Doctor Banner… positive on the GPS scan from Captain Rogers’ phone… yes, sir, I’ll dispatch a team to pick him up… of course not, utmost care to avoid a public Code Green… yes, yes… have a good day, sir.”

* * *

She had been given an escort and a Level 3 Clearance, although she doubted the little plastic tag with a photo copied off SI’s public website would do her any good.

Pepper only vaguely knew Clint Barton. She had only spoken to him once in the wake of the Manhattan battle when she’d stumbled over the ruins herself, eyes ever skyward. Barton had been as much a shadow in her perception then as he was now. They had shaken hands but he’d remained professionally distant which had suited her just fine. She had about as much inclination to talk to him now as she’d had five years ago and the reason was the same trouble-seeking billionaire.

Barton was toasting a cigarette in the cramped little smoker’s den outside the main building. That suited Pepper too because she had reception up here. She made sure to stand a good distance away from the cubicle, both because she didn’t need him to bend an ear and because the cigarette smell made her nauseous. She was secretly relieved that Tony had only skirted that particular vice but had never picked up on it.

She made two calls. The first was to the office. She was put through to her PA, whom she told that she’d be away for three days at minimum but realistically was leaning more towards a week. Her mother had fallen abruptly ill, she said, wondering what possessed her to formulate that particular lie. Maybe it was a matter of not wanting to voice out loud that every grief in her life was nowadays linked to Tony, that Tony had become the sword of Damocles hanging over her head. Stacey accepted the face-saver without commentary. She wished Pepper’s perfectly healthy mother a quick recovery and promised to reschedule as necessary.

The second call was to JARVIS’ private number, which she only dialed once she was sure that Barton had lit up a second smoke. JARVIS, oblivious to Tony’s current predicament, answered promptly and asked how he could be of assistance. Pepper wanted to know if Tony had left her a message. A confidential one. She was prompted to give her credentials. In the seconds it took JARVIS to verify her input her mind ran rampant with possibilities. She knew Tony was proprietary over the ship, sometimes to the point of obsession. Ever since he’d stepped back on that blasted thing it was as if part of him was always there. But what about last weekend? He’d been so carefree, so full of life. They hadn’t breached his rule about SI and SHIELD once, and she’d never caught him brooding, not even with that drink in his hand.

But another idea gradually wormed its way into her mind, a thoroughly disagreeable idea. Was he suicidal?

_He said he loved you. He bought you an eye mask, toots. Suicidal men don’t go and buy eye masks. They may buy engagement rings, but not eye masks._

“Mr Stark did not leave any messages with me, Ms Potts,” JARVIS said. “Would you like to record one for him?”

“No,” Pepper said and ended the call.

* * *

The scanner beeped affirmingly green as the officer at Border Control presented his passport. Bruce hadn’t worried about Immigration. By this point he almost never traveled under his own name. Over the years he had built up a collection of forged documents.

“Thank you, sir,” the officer said. Bruce pocketed the passport and cleared the aisle. He bought a prepaid in the arrival area, switching out his Russian SIM. He scrolled through his list of saved numbers, past Steve’s and Tony’s. Momentarily his finger hovered above Pepper’s number. He’d been putting off calling her. The idea of facing Pepper scared him far more than the idea of facing Tony. He swiped on until he reached Harold Hogan’s entry.

Happy picked up on the third ring. “Hogan.”

“It's Bruce,” he said, then added somewhat superfluously, “Bruce Banner.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Bruce bit back the apology that was on his tongue. _Sorry for bailing on pizza and movie night. Sorry for disappearing for four months without saying goodbye. No hard feelings, right?_

“New number?”

“Yeah… listen, Happy—”

“Mr Stark’s indisposed if that’s what you’re about to ask. So’s Ms Potts.”

Of course they were. Indisposed to take calls, especially when they were coming from Bruce Banner. “I get it,” he said. “But it’s important. Very important.”

“Well, they’re very indisposed. You wanna leave a message, doc?”

“Yes. Tell them…”

He paused. Two men were approaching him, sinister in their nondescriptness. Experience had given him enough pointers to hone an instinct for government agents. Over the years Natasha had helpfully filled in the gaps in his knowledge.

“I’ll call you back, Happy,” Bruce said.

One of the men flashed a SHIELD badge for him to see. The Other Guy twitched under Bruce’s skin. _They know_ , he thought. He remembered Zemo’s hearty laugh in that little Sokovian cafe.

In the end, the decision was not his to take. He could oppose them and risk being forcibly seized, but evidently Fury knew how to play his conscience well. Nobody wanted a Code Green at JFK, least of all Bruce. If the Hulk ran rampant, the collateral damage would be immense, the aftermath too public to contain. From there it would be a one way ticket to a lab gurney at some black ops site, hospitality courtesy of General Ross.

Bruce stowed his carry-on in the trunk of a sedan and sat stiffly in the back while the nameless, faceless agents ferried him onto a private hangar offside the public airstrip. He boarded the SHIELD jet with lead in his stomach but hardly any objection. Sitting in a windowless hold he practiced his best protestations of ignorance for the inevitable interrogation. When the craft door opened, it did so to a desert climate. While not exhaustingly warm, it felt positively temperate compared to the chill of the encroaching Moscow winter which had taken hold in his bones. Right now he really missed it.

He squinted against the sunlight. In the distance he could see the behemoth compound where a scaffolding-covered structure loomed large and daunting. Even obscured by metal and tarpaulin it was unmistakable. He’d always felt as though this ship hovered dismally over them all, him and Tony and Steve. Whatever he did, however far he ran from it, the thread of events would lead him back here sooner or later.

He stepped into the waiting Jeep.

* * *

“It’s not fine dining,” Maria admitted, “but maybe it’s best to keep it bland if you’ve got an upset stomach.”

Pepper stirred the spoon in the Banana & Nut Oatmeal. Flaker’s Instant packets, just add half a cup of water and dip into the start of a new day. Or in her case, the conclusion of one. She’d been on base for a perceived eternity. Her feet hurt. Her head hurt. Her stomach hurt most of all. On any other day she would be sat at home enjoying dinner with Tony. Maybe they would share a bottle of wine, although Pepper had made herself a solemn promise of overseeing and curbing the distribution of those in the future. Tony drinking Pina Coladas in the morning just hadn’t sat right with her, no matter how much she tried to convince herself that it had just been a one-off. Had he started drinking again without her knowing? Wouldn’t she have smelled that on his breath? This wasn’t some rogue outcome because Tony had had a beer too many. She wasn’t sitting here pretending not to be grossed out by Flaker’s Instant Banana & Nut Oatmeal because Tony had missed his AA meetings for the last six years.

“This is just what I need,” she assured Maria, stirring some more to help the steaming porridge cool down.

There wasn’t a peep from inside the ship. Complete blackout. Instead of two men in the burns unit Fury now had fifteen casualties in the medical ward. This was an intergalactic war ship. What did he think, that tickling it with industrial grade torches would as much as scratch the paint on it?

“Do they have access to food and water in there?” she asked.

“There are vending machines and water coolers throughout,” Maria said. “Not the healthiest diet, but they won’t go hungry. Are you okay?”

“No,” Pepper said. “No, I think not. I better go lie down. The second room down the hall you said? Please get me if there are any developments, yes?”

“Of course,” Maria said. “Of course. Go get some sleep.”

* * *

Steve rubbed at his wrists. “So I’m pardoned now? Just like that?”

“Wouldn’t call it forgive and forget,” Rumlow said and pocketed the keys. “Boss’ orders are straightforward. The two of us’ll be Siamese twins, joined at the hip until this is over and you get reevaluated.”

“No progress yet?”

“Locked down tight. They got his missus in though, maybe for leverage. Saw her saunter around with Hill earlier.”

“Ms Potts?”

Rumlow nodded, packed away the manacles and opened the door.

“That’s her. Now get to steppin’. We’ll round up the boys and go put them paws on this hoopty. Fury says get him alive, but that don’t mean we can’t put a slug in him if he’s being a prick.”

Steve frowned. “We have permission to shoot?”

“Guy’s sitting in an operational alien warship, Cap. It’s not about _if_ someone shoots. It’s about who shoots first.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [orders are orders](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/24/24.html)


	25. Chapter 25

Another windowless room. There was something about the combination of cheap drywall and military issue furniture that gave all of these places an identical look and smell. In their discomfort, both he and the Other Guy were in complete agreement.

“If this weren't a red button situation,” Fury said, “we'd be having a nice long conversation about why you’re in bed with Mother Russia.”

So much for stealth and fake IDs. Had Steve ratted him out? He’d been kidding himself thinking he could move undetected by the watchful single eye of Big Brother.

"Nice to see you too, Nick,” he replied with mock congeniality. It was petty and childish, but he was too jetlagged to think of a wittier repartee. “I didn't know I wasn't allowed to take a holiday.”

“A holiday.” Fury snorted. “A twelve hour train journey to have brunch in Novi Grad followed by supper in Moscow? Sounds like your idea of a good time.”

“I like trains,” Bruce said flatly. “And it's a scenic route.”

“We’ll talk about Soviet railroads and their touristic appeal, believe me. But not now. Congratulations. Tony Stark granted you a stay of execution.”

There was a knock on the door. Fury pushed a buzzer and the door opened. Maria Hill entered, trailed by Steve and a man Bruce didn’t know. Everyone pulled out chairs. Bruce caught Steve’s eye. Evidently, they weren’t gathering to discuss how best to stick Tony with another Apogee Award.

He was reminded heavily of the last time they'd assembled in a room like this, except that time Natasha had been there, sitting languidly sprawled in her seat, taking the news of an interstellar mission in stride while James Rhodes laid out the possibility that Tony might, against all of their beliefs, still be out there and alive.

Only Steve didn't look any happier now than he had back then.

* * *

There wasn't a lot to go on. SHIELD had set up their own communication system, finding a clever way of circumventing the fact that the ship was a black hole for traditional signals. Some enterprising soul had piggybacked SHIELD comms to the ship's own unique frequency. The setup was imperfect but until now, it had largely worked.

Two separate avenues of communication existed, set up as custom stacked protocols. For comms-in, the SHIELD computers acted as the client while the Chitauri system was the server. For comms-out, multiple similar client/server relationships existed in reverse. All but a few were currently unreachable; one where Tony was working and others presumably where the tech teams were set up. Multiple connection requests had been made from these outgoing ports which the SHIELD-side server failed to acknowledge. The issue was frustratingly mundane and under normal circumstances anyone could fix it. What complicated it to the point of impossibility was the Chitauri component.

Something else was nagging at Bruce too. Those ports were all making outgoing connection requests. But why would Tony try to be signalling out if he was the one who'd sabotaged the comms? 

The more he played with the idea that Tony might be an unwilling participant in his own lockdown, the more Fury and Maria argued him down. Who else had shut down the systems if not Tony? Outgoing requests didn't mean that Tony was attempting to get word out. It simply meant that someone was.

It was occam's razor, wasn’t it? Which was more likely? A catastrophic malfunction in an already unstable system or a deliberate shutdown and someone else trying to get the mainframe port operational? Both had merit as possible scenarios, depending on how black one’s view of Tony's mental stability was.

So two possibilities then. Tony was trying to fix a momentous coding error or Tony was racking up future jail time for hijacking government property and endangering innocent people’s lives.

And as if dealing with this whole mess wasn’t enough, Bruce had the privilege of ending his shift on a bleaker note still.

They ran into each other in the hallway outside, him distracted by his own thoughts, her in unmistakable hurry.

“Sorry, I—” he said, stopping himself when he caught an eyeful of strawberry blond hair illuminated in the hard blue light of a smartphone screen. “Pepper?”

She looked up sharply. Dark bags sat under her eyes. Her hair hung limply, a far cry from the well-groomed appearance he was so used to from her. How long had she been here for?

“Bruce?” she asked and he realized the curveball was reciprocal. She wasn't expecting him any more than he was expecting her. “What are you doing here?”

“I just got back from a long holiday," he said, "SHIELD were nice enough to provide an airport shuttle service.”

Pepper looked him over, long and pondering. Then she said sweetly, “Would you like to take a walk? I was about to take a walk.”

They went outside where the new day’s activities were in full swing. Pepper produced a pair of sunglasses from her purse and put them on. Bruce squinted squeamishly into the sun after having squinted at a screen for most of the night. He wanted to ask her how she was doing, to apologize for everything that had precipitated this situation.

“Any news?” she asked instead. Evidently this was the wrong time for a reconciliation attempt.

“It’s not quick. There’s a lot of data. Way too much for a human to effectively analyze.” He paused. “Pepper, is there any possibility that JA—”

“Don’t say it,” she interrupted him dully. “I’ve already had this fight with Nick and Maria.”

“JARVIS would be able to get to the bottom of this a lot faster. We’re on borrowed time here. Tony is on borrowed time.”

Pepper looked around her furtively as though she was afraid of uninvited eavesdroppers. “Tony didn’t want JARVIS near these systems. Under no circumstances. Because of the other version.”

He stared at her.

“What other version?”

“The other version,” Pepper repeated. “The version from the spaceship.”

“No. No, that can’t be. JARVIS was self-contained on the Iron Man motherboard.”

“Not according to Tony,” Pepper said. “He thought there was a version of it in here. Part of it. Remnants, I don’t know. He wasn’t making a lot of sense.”

“Hang on,” he said slowly. “There's a possibly corrupt version of a possibly sentient AI in the systems and nobody thought to mention this to me, say, six hours ago?”

Pepper’s eyes widened. “It’s highly confidential… only a handful of people—”

“I should _be_ that handful of people! God, this is important. This whole situation could be getting very serious very quick and I’m still only told half the story.”

“It's already serious!” she exclaimed. “He could go to prison for this!”

But Bruce was talking about bigger things than Tony’s personal dramas. That ship was a weapon of mass destruction, the alien equivalent of Fat Man or Little Boy. And they had no idea who or what was in control of it. “Any other critical information you've left out?”

He expected her to snap at him, argue back. It took him by guilty surprise when she burst into tears, big fat things streaming out from under her sunglasses.

“I don't know what to think!” she heaved between sobs. “One minute he's fine, the next he's rambling about how JARVIS can't find out and making me check security cameras in the basement and screaming in his sleep. I don't know how to filter out what's a real concern and what's Tony's paranoia.”

Impulsively, he put his arms around her. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm sorry, I never should have left, I—”

“It's not about you,” she said, her voice muffled in the fabric of his shirt. She pulled away. “It's not always about you, Bruce.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to let it all out. How neither of them had ever appreciated him. That he was long past tired of being dragged into the mess that was her and Tony's life. But the way she looked at him, a mess of raw, exhausted emotion, was intoxicating enough to curb the bitterness dead in his throat. Because nothing did it for Bruce quite like being needed.

“I have to go,” Pepper said. She wiped at her eyes under the shades. “My ride’s here.”

She left him standing like a scalded dog. He turned around, wanting to call after her but instead found himself face to face with the one man he didn’t want to see.

Clint Barton didn’t bother with civility. “Great,” he said. “They called you in. Didn’t think Fury was that desperate.”

Bruce had never had the knack for being charming and he didn’t feel compelled to start trying it out now. There was no need for him to engage with Clint Barton. He could keep chipping away at the colossal headache that was Tony Stark’s maybe-rogue AI and Clint could carry on doing whatever superfluous SHIELD agents did at a time like this. Their paths didn’t have to cross.

"Look, it's fine,” Bruce said. “I'll keep out of your way.”

“I know what you've been doing,” Clint said abruptly.

Bruce felt reflexly defensive, the way he always did in the face of suspicion. “I’ve been working on this. Like everyone else.” He mustered up what he hoped was a friendly half-smile. Nothing said moral high ground like exchanging polite pleasantries with the man who blamed you for his girlfriend's ugly death.

“Before,” clarified Clint. “In Russia.”

Bruce felt his chest go cold and tight. They both knew Clint wasn't talking about Siberia and Steve, or Hydra and his chat with Zemo in that Sokovian café.

“I have an eye on you, Banner. I know what you get up to when nobody's watching.”

He was talking about Kitai Gorod and the cash on the nightstand and the stained shirt that was still stuffed in the bottom of Bruce’s carry-on.

* * *

They were gathered in the command center, stuffed shoulder to shoulder. Fury had called in non-optional overtime on every member of staff available. The JARVIS theory was unofficial suspicion, but there was no reason to sit on the fence about it. They’d walk up and ring the doorbell. If nobody was home, too bad. But in case there was someone on the other side of that peephole, they’d know.

“Ping it,” Fury said.

There was a long interval of nothing but the clack-clack-clack of plastic keys being methodically abused. This was followed by an even longer phase of inaction, twenty-five sets of eyes staring expectantly at a wall of static monitors. Eventually, the moment of suspense passed. Sighs of defeat were heaved, murmuring and chatter replacing the laden silence.

“Try again. Different frequencies, all channels.”

A crackling. The speakers filled the room with the screech of feedback. A few people winced and covered their ears. Then the noise faded to static.

In the 1960's an MIT professor by the name of Joseph Weizenbaum had invented SLIP, an extension of the programming language Fortran and later described a natural language conversation software called ELIZA. ELIZA had been primitive in its conception, but its legacy had inspired a young Tony Stark to follow on its heels some twenty years later with an unquestionably groundbreaking success.

Incidentally, ELIZA had given rise to another phenomenon, known in professional circles as the ‘ELIZA effect’ or the tendency to ascribe emotional involvement to the output of a computer program.

So when the screens flickered to life as one, the acoustic buzz now replaced by a blinking text bar on solid black background, the crowd drew a breath as one.

“I’ll be damned,” someone said.

* * *

Bruce put down the paper, switching off the bedside lamp. They’d gotten him a copy of Tony’s final year project write-up at MIT. _Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing: Applicability in Artificial Intelligence._ For that time, groundbreaking. Having come to know Jarvis at his full capacity, much was obsolete or outright antiquated.

In other words, they were tilting at windmills.

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. His skin crawled with tiredness and irritability. The Other Guy was beginning to get fractious, like a toddler kept up past bedtime. He wasn’t in danger of losing control, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant to feel the churlish displeasure of another entity clawing at the walls of his mind.

In all honesty it had come as a surprise when Maria Hill parked him in front of a room with a plain old door and a plain old bed and not even a Hulk-proof sink.

“We weren’t expecting you to crash the party,” Maria elaborated. “I never thought I’d say so, but for once you’re not the biggest issue on the agenda.”

“Thanks,” he said, but doubted it was a compliment. He fished around in his pocket before Maria could leave. “Could you give this back to Steve Rogers? I was out of spare change. He was amenable enough to loan me.”

Maria took the wallet. She nodded, then gave him a fake motherly look. “Get some rest, Bruce. Exhaustion doesn’t look good on you.”

The problem was, he couldn’t sleep and Tony’s pillow book hadn’t exactly whet his desire to start counting sheep. He picked his memory for the missing puzzle piece, the crunch point that stood between them and the door mechanism.

Maybe he should ask the Other Guy for help, rip a hole into that stupid ship so they could all go home.

Where was Tony’s pocket-size tazer when it was truly needed for once?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing makes us happier than fanart, so this week (for actual Easter) we decided to hand over the easter egg reins to you guys. 
> 
> This one is from Skedoodle, who drew us [this fabulous picture](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/25/thankyouskedoodle.jpg) of what's going on onboard the ship from Tony's perspective. 
> 
> And who could forget the [poor hungry spacewhale](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/25/thankyoudodo.jpg) courtesty of Dodo.
> 
> Thank you guys! <3


	26. Chapter 26

“This will do,” she said. “I’ll walk the rest.”

She didn’t wait for a verdict, unclasping her seatbelt and pushing open the door. The air was clammy outside and for a moment her lungs felt like they’d been depleted of all the nice tempered oxygen of the onboard A/C.

“I’ll wait here. Don’t be long, ma’am.”

Damn right he was going to wait. Not a car was moving and theirs was no exception. Some unlucky pile-up about a mile or two up ahead had stagnated the entire traffic. Even the paramedics had wound through the crowd on foot. A good idea thought not only Pepper but a number of passengers who were abandoning their drivers in favor of getting ahead on foot.

She slammed the door shut behind her, leaving Barton stuck behind the wheel of the sedan. As she walked, she looked back to see him pull down the window on the driver’s side. He gave her a lazy I-see-you wink before she disappeared in the flow of pedestrians.

This could be the perfect moment to escape. Maybe her only chance. Part of her wanted to, pleaded for her to put as much distance between herself and Barton’s nicotine cologne as she could. But she couldn’t; not almost forty-four hours into it. A low rumbling gut feeling (the ulcer) predicted a turn for the better at hour fifty through fifty-one. If she could endure just that little longer, then this horrible, horrible ordeal would end. All they had to do was get access to the door interface and from there Fury’s men would do the rest. They would get Tony out and she’d be waiting by the entrance, lawyers' number at the ready. Whatever Tony had done inside that ship, the legal team would take care of it. Money would take care of the rest.

She found Happy wedged in a plastic chair outside the coffee shop she’d told him to wait at, sipping a mocha. He’d spotted her first and waved her over.

“Ms Potts,” he said. “Wasn’t sure you’d make it. A real bummer that crash. A write-off if you ask me. The store owner ain’t gonna be happy with that Chevy parked right through his shop window.”

Road traffic collisions seemed so mundane right now, she couldn’t bring herself to put more thought into it. The lawyers would sort that out too. That was what lawyers were good for; brokering between insurance companies and putting out the fires Tony kept lighting under his own ass.

Happy’s expression fell. “He’s in trouble, ain’t he?”

“I can’t say. You know I can’t say anything about that, Happy.”

“You don’t hav’ta, Ms Potts. I knew when he didn’t show at the airstrip that day. Wouldn’t be caught dead staying under a SHIELD roof longer than he had to, he told me. Pretty sure that includes overnight trips.”

“Yes,” she said listlessly. She spied the carry-on parked underneath the cafe table. “Thank you for getting that.”

Happy rolled it out and pulled up the handle. He didn’t let go when she reached for it.

“I could come with if you want that. As security, y’know. Don’t trust these guys as far as I can throw ‘em.”

She looked him up and down for a moment. Harold Hogan would take a bullet for her on any given day. She pondered the option of giving in to his request, but it was nothing more than a thought experiment. Fury would never agree to it and she didn’t want to press her luck. That was reserved for Tony and whenever they got him out. He’d need every ounce of it.

“That guy with you?” Happy asked gruffly, nodding towards the crowd. She turned around, spying Clint Barton leaning against a lamppost on the other side of the street. Happy huffed and drew back his suit jacket a little to display the taser clipped to his belt. Pepper doubted a police grade taser would ruffle Barton's feathers. She put an arm on Happy’s shoulder.

“It’s all right. Thank you, Happy. I have to go now.”

“I’ll walk you back, Ms Potts. Through the crowd. Streets are chock-full.”

She reached again for the carry-on, more decisive this time.

“It’s all right, Happy. Will you keep your phone turned on, please? I’ll call you when… it’s over.”

“I’ll keep the engine warm,” Happy promised. “You just take care.”

* * *

 Taking care morphed into keeping her defenses up as soon as they crossed the SHIELD perimeter. Even Barton sat up straighter in the driver’s seat.

While the status quo hadn’t changed in her absence, the tenseness had reached new heights. She perceived a cutting hostility at her persona as though in her absence a secret polling had been held and SHIELD had chosen her as the scapegoat in Tony’s stead.

“Ms Potts.”

Private meeting, Nick Fury’s office. Whatever grace period Tony had been given was spent up. She knew that without having to look at the files on Fury’s desk or the expression on his face. Despite the gravity of the situation, triumph leaked out of him like smoke. He’d won. He’d worn her resolve thin.

A peculiar thought grabbed hold of her mind, a thought that absolved Tony of all his accused crimes and shifted the blame on Fury, Fury who had set this up from the day Tony had come back to Earth, the day Pepper’s life had begun anew after a four year standstill. All the hardships they’d faced after, from Tony’s strung out recovery to the toll it had taken on their relationship, to the cost she’d paid in guarding and protecting her own heart and sanity… they could all be traced back to the man who’d given the order to send a nuclear warhead for Manhattan.

Fury splayed his fingers across the table. A superficial incitement. Her move. A difficult move when he’d just put check to her king.

She looked out at the files assorted on the table. A folder titled ANTHONY STARK, the same one she’d glimpsed about a year back when she’d first picked him up from Fury’s care. It was thicker now, home to even more dog ears and coffee stains. She doubted that anything inside amounted to praise and worship. Several other documents were laid out. Profiles on Steve Rogers and other SHIELD agents. A big red stamp labeled CONFIDENTIAL which had traveled most if not all papers on the desk. She spied a glimpse of something titled PROJECT: INSIGHT and put it to memory.

Fury sighed, a theatrical exaggeration of disappointment.

“I don’t have to tell you that we’re at an impasse,” he said and she wondered bitterly why he said it at all if it was so obvious. He had her backed in a corner was what was really behind his words, and she had better brace herself for the kicks because they were in the coming.

There was no use in feigning ignorance here. “Where are we standing?”

“You, on thin ice. On very thin ice.” He pointed a finger skywards. “Nobody on the upper floor enjoys the Stark buffoonery. No laughs. Not the hint of a smile on their faces. It’s time to pull the hook on this bad performance, Ms Potts, and I daresay it’s your chance to shine.”

“Mine?” she said dryly. She didn’t like where this was going. Suddenly all she could think of were holes in the desert and sand in her mouth.

Fury put a plastic bag on the table. From the plastic bag he pulled a phone. She knew before the screen turned on that it was Tony’s. Then the screen did turn on and her last doubts blew away like leaves in the wind. The phone’s screensaver was a picture of Tony’s vintage car. She’d been a victim of morbid jealousy when she’d seen it at first — shouldn’t it have been a photo of the two of them? — before sitting herself down to a mental reality-check over turning into a green-eyed monster about a car.

The Locked icon popped up on top. _Unlock to proceed,_ it said. Underneath it were a stack of unread alerts. Calls, messages. She spied her own name among them.

Fury slid the phone across the desk.

“I presume you can unlock this.”

“I can’t,” she lied.

Fury looked resigned for all of a heartbeat. Then his lips dropped into a thin downward line. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

“You can’t have JARVIS, Nick,” she said. How often did she have to repeat herself until he understood it? She felt like a hamster in a wheel.

“Yes, so you’ve said. And yet both of us are sitting in this room while Tony Stark is sitting inside that ship. The doors are closed, Ms Potts, and the way I see it that’s how they’ll stay. Now, there are two ways this can go and I’m here to tell you that only one of them ends happily.” He took the folder titled ANTHONY STARK, opened it and slid it across to her, right next to Tony’s phone.

She stared at the first page with terror in her chest.

It was an official sanction to use deadly force. Stamps and signatures approved the order. The only blank line was the one belonging to Nicholas J. Fury.

A pen appeared next to the file.

“You might as well sign his death warrant yourself,” Fury said. “If I can’t get that phone operational, the next time you see him will be at the coroner’s inquest.”

She said nothing. The ice under her feet was paper thin. If she listened closely enough, she would have heard it cracking.

“Doctor Banner says that there is trace data of the JARVIS program on the ship’s systems, in corrupted form. If a current version were to be installed, it would flush out the outdated iteration.  What’s left of my tech team concurs, and I trust them.”

 _Coded or real, won’t make a difference_ , Tony had told her that day on the beach. _He’ll act like any other creature would in his stead. He’ll try to survive. And I don’t think I could stop him. Not another time._

The door opened with such precise timing that it couldn’t have been an accident. A man stepped in, broad-shouldered, grim-faced. He wore tactical uniform with the capital letters STRIKE printed on the chest. RUMLOW, his name tag said.

 _He’s here to collect the order_ , she thought. She glanced at the folder and Fury’s missing signature. Fury stretched the silence provocatively. The soldier took up position by the door. While she could see through the theatrics, the way this was all set up to intimidate her, it didn't stop the tactic from working.

“I’m not going to unlock that phone,” she said in a voice that was far stronger than she felt. She got up to leave. She felt a burning urge to exit the room as though she was trapped here with rabid dogs.

The two men exchanged glances over her head.

As she passed the soldier he shifted his position from one foot to the other. She had to summon all of her composure not to jump out of her heels, fearing he would grab for the doorknob and hinder her from leaving.

_But you still don’t understand, toots._

It wasn’t her they cared about. She could come and go like the waves of the ocean. It was Tony’s fate that was sealed like the door that fell shut behind her.

* * *

The room SHIELD had provided her felt more like prison than place of retreat. She didn’t feel any safer here than in Fury’s office. She felt more and more adrift with every hour that ticked by on the clock, with all these hours crawling in unison towards a big amorphous fate for Tony.

She’d only just gotten him back, they couldn’t take him away from her again. Because this time, she knew it would be forever. There was no sale or return clause on Fury’s extermination order, no right of rescission. Once the signature was on paper she’d be out of options to play.

She bit her fist, fighting tears.

When Tony came home — and it was a when, not an if — she’d put him on a tight leash. No more spaceships, no more suits. She’d force domestication down his throat like medicine to a child. He’d take up a fig-leaf position within SI and she’d have R&D dump so many project proposals on his desk that he wouldn’t have the time to fabricate new problems to run himself into.

All she needed to do was get him out of here. The rest would sort itself. She would sort it out. Just please, God, give her the chance.

She looked over at the untouched carry-on that had preempted her arrival and suddenly the tears came and the feeling of suffocation she’d felt back when she’d watched the portal close above Manhattan, sat stiffly on Tony’s designer sofa in Tony’s designer mansion, thousands of miles away and as helpless as she was now.

If only Jim were here! If only she hadn’t sent Happy away! She put her head in her hands and cried in earnest. Jim was in the ground and Happy wasn’t any protection against the likes of Fury and his elite soldiers, but she would have felt better with him here all the same. There was nobody who was unequivocally on her side in this. She was alone. It was as though solitude and misery had become the defining traits of her and Tony’s relationship.

There was a knock on the door.

“Not now!” she snapped. She hastily wiped the glaze from her eyes. She couldn’t let them see her like this. Frailty would have them jump at her like hyenas.

The door handle turned despite her protestations. She found herself shifting up and away from it. She’d never felt more trapped in her life.

It was Bruce. He poked his head around the door first and upon escaping a further verbal assault, shuffled the rest of his body inside. He stood there, all hunched shoulders and irresolution.

“You’re the last person I want to see right now,” she said, because snapping at Bruce was safe. He wasn't going to do anything to her. What did it say of her that she thought the one man who turned into a literal monster was the most harmless to be around?

Bruce didn’t react to her vent. “I brought you coffee,” he said instead and held out a styrofoam cup. Stark Industries had gone fully sustainable, reusable cups included. She took it anyway. She couldn’t care less about environmental damage right now.

Bruce took a seat in the fold-out chair by the bed. He was looking intently at his hands which were folded in his lap.

“Are you the good cop in all of this?” she asked.

He cringed. So yes. She’d guessed as much. Fury had sent him to play her conscience. Maybe a last attempt at finding middle ground. Or maybe Bruce was just the unlucky messenger to tell her it was time to take out the pen and sign on the dotted line.

“Would it make a difference if I told you I genuinely believe playing along right now is the right thing to do?” Bruce asked.

“No,” she said. “Not as long as you can’t tell me that without looking me in the eye.”

Bruce looked up, but not quite enough. The faint hope she’d felt at potential back-up crumbled like a house of sand.

“I don’t think Tony caused the lockdown,” he said. “I think he’s trapped on there and I know you think that too. And I know for a fact that for all the show Fury puts on, he doesn’t believe his own theory of Tony as the terrorist.”

“He’s got a kill order on his desk,” she said. Her voice rose. In a moment she’d be hysterical. “This isn’t a game, Bruce. They’ll shoot him dead.”

Some of the coffee splashed over. She wanted to throw it against the wall, or at Bruce, or at the first SHIELD agent she crossed paths with. She put it on the nightstand with trembling hands before she could.

Bruce pressed on calmly. “I think he’s trapped on there because part of JARVIS is still spliced into the operating system. Maybe there was a malfunction when Tony tried to purge the data or something else that set off the ship’s security protocols. We don’t know that and we won’t have certainty until we go in there and look at it on site.”

“Nobody’s going in there to have a cozy chat with him!” she screeched. In her head she could already picture the scene, Tony’s corpse covered with bloodied linen, SHIELD staff going blithely about their work at the computer terminal. ‘It really was just a bug,’ one of them would say, and then they’d all shrug and call it home time and someone would bill her for the transfer of Tony’s remains.

“I know,” Bruce said, “I know.”

“You don’t know anything! Nobody does! Pinning the blame on Tony is all Fury wants. He wants him out of the way. He wants _us_ out of the way.”

“Pepper, please, listen to me. The only important thing right now is playing along until we can get Tony out of there. Everything else, we can deal with later.”

Suddenly she couldn’t follow. She felt nauseous. All she could think of was Tony’s corpse and the mortician nodding soberly and advising her to close the casket for the funeral because it had been a headshot and there was no decent way to cover that up.

“I helped you look for Tony for four years,” Bruce said. “I helped bring him home. I'm a friend, not some double agent with an ulterior motive.”

He fixed her with a look that was so desperate it made her uncomfortable.

“There's too much at stake here… and it's not just Tony. We're running out of time. You have to decide, Pepper. You’re the only one who can decide.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
> Also, holy shit...Endgame!!! We've seen it, but just in case not everyone has, please no spoilers in the comments. <3 


	27. Chapter 27

Fury might have given him a hall pass and stuck him on guard duty with Rumlow, but Steve wasn't an idiot. They wanted him out of the way, yet ready for service at any time. Just in case.

In part he was relieved that he had ended up on this side of the lockdown instead of being trapped on the ship. But could he have stopped it? Prevented it? In his mind he willed himself back aboard the craft, back into that room with Tony, watching Tony tap away at indecipherable code for hours on end. In all honesty, he wouldn’t have been able to tell whether Tony was hacking the Pentagon or ordering pizza from looking at that screen.

He wouldn’t have been able to change anything but the side of the door he was now standing on.

And all for what? Bruce’s call? Bruce had been on-site for close to two days and Steve hadn’t exchanged a word with him apart from their meet-up in the briefing room. He’d been on the prowl for hours now, ready to intercept him whenever he would show his face. So when the doc finally emerged from the command center on shift-change, Steve took his chance.

“Dr Banner,” he said, deliberately avoiding a first-name address. Rumlow didn’t have to know about their little summer getaway. According to SHIELD records they’d last met at James’ Rhodes funeral. Make it cordial then.

Bruce picked up on the tip-off. He nodded curtly.

“How was the flight?” Steve asked. “Russia, I heard.” The latter wasn’t a secret.

“Long. Longer still to get here. But at least there was no turbulence. I get plane-sick fast.”

Was turbulence a code word for something? Before he could think of a way to ask without red flagging his escort, Bruce changed tack.

“Say, could I borrow your wallet? The vending machine here doesn’t take rubles and we skipped the bureau de change on the way.”

Steve was momentarily confused but rooted around in his pocket anyway.

“Thanks,” Bruce said, took the whole wallet and walked off.

“Good talk,” Steve grumbled under his breath.

Nothing about this day was going his way.

* * *

He smelled her before he saw her. She was a wraith in the hallways, wan and harrowed and trailed by the scent of bitter second-hand smoke.

“Afternoon, Ms Potts,” he said respectfully, the way you did when you saw a grieving widow at a funeral. He tried to remember what they’d talked about, if they’d talked anything at all back in 2013 when Tony Stark’s empty casket had been lowered into the ground. She’d thanked him for being a pallbearer (a publicity stunt, he would have never insisted if Fury hadn’t taken the decision for him) and they’d shaken hands, but Rhodes had whisked her away from the cameras’ relentless fire shortly after. Out of all of them she was bearing the brunt of this situation most keenly. She had to be going out of her mind with worry.

He wondered what she saw in Tony that nobody else did. With the Internet’s help he had watched a life of debauchery with fascination and horror in equal measure. He had spent hours on hours poring over Tony's checkered history, from the DUIs to the kiss-and-tell exposes, decades of full throttle lasciviousness and lurid tabloid headlines. He'd watched an entire back catalog of candid footage of a man with no sense of when to stop. Pepper had always been somewhere to his right, almost but not completely off-screen, handing him the cards that told him what to say and politely deflecting questions when he went and messed that up too.

And here she was, picking up the pieces yet again, with the same protestations of his good faith, his innocence. He was a victim of circumstances, always. At least in her eyes.

“Director Fury's putting together a strike team,” Pepper said. Her voice was measured. He could only guess what she thought of it.

He had no idea how to reply. What did she expect of him? To take Tony’s side? He couldn’t do that. He didn't think Tony would press the big red button, but he’d seen soldiers do unpredictable things in the face of war. They had called it shell shock or bullet wind back in the trenches of Stalingrad and although there was a fancier term for it nowadays, the symptoms remained the same. And nobody was more shell-shocked than Tony Stark after flying through that portal.

“They’ll be briefed,” he said. “There are protocols. You don’t have to worry, ma’am.”

“Will you be on the team?”

“That's about the worst possible idea I can think of,” he said quickly. “When it comes to Tony, me being there always makes things worse.”

He looked at her bloodshot eyes and the way her lower lip was fighting not to tremble. She didn’t break down in front of him and she didn’t get on her knees to beg in Tony Stark’s favor. She said simply, “Try to be on that team, Steve. You’re the only one who’d take him alive.”

Then she passed him and after her went Clint Barton. He grimaced and circled a finger next to his temple. “Lovesick,” he whispered under his breath, then feigned vomiting. Steve watched the blond pony tail until it disappeared around the corner.

Virginia Potts reminded him an awful lot of Peggy Carter.

* * *

“Steve!” someone called the moment he had his hand on the doorknob. He made a wry face but was sure to smooth out the irritation when he looked up.

Maria Hill walked his way and he straightened, ready to receive whatever conclusive truths she must be bearing. He’d just been green-lit for a four hour rest which he’d very much been looking forward to. Seemed like he could write that off. He debated an attempt at politeness and a sweeping what-can-I-do-for-you-on-this-fine-day endeavor, but even Captain America ran on a short fuse with enough sleep deprivation. Besides, they were all long past courtesy and a cheery personality.

He waited for her to speak and call to arms, but she merely held out his renegade billfold.

“Doctor Banner sends his thanks,” she said.

He stowed it in his back pocket and asked lackluster, “News?”

Hill pursed her lips. “Maybe. Don’t make me jinx it.” She nodded towards the door. “Downtime?”

He couldn’t stop the next words before they materialized out of his mouth. “I’d like to go in. Once the doors open.”

Did he though? Or was that just the nagging guilt Pepper had so suavely mobilized? If there was anyone on this green earth who deserved to see consequences for his actions, it was Tony Stark. Yes, he'd been through a major trauma — but hadn't they all? Was four years of isolation so much worse than living in the thick of war? They’d all suffered, not just Tony. Why did he get a free pass every time he asked for it?

If it had been Howard in this situation, he'd have been rolling his sleeves up and mucking in with SHIELD, sharing intelligence and working out how best to use the captured ship for the greater good. Tony hid behind lawyers and prevaricated progress wherever he could.

But Pepper wasn’t wrong. There was a strike force coming Tony's way and if Tony so happened to hold his hand over the button that controlled the alien guns, Rumlow and his squad wouldn’t hesitate to shoot and they wouldn’t aim just to incapacitate. They’d shoot to kill. The formalities would be set straight after, like they always were.

And while he wanted Tony to face up to what he'd done, he had never believed in the concept of Judge, Jury and Executioner. If Tony didn’t get that privilege, then neither should Fury and SHIELD.

“I’ll pass it on, Steve,” Hill said. “But I can’t promise anything. We can’t handle another slip-up. You have to understand that.”

“Of course,” Steve said. “Well, you know where to find me, ma’am.”

She nodded and they parted ways. Steve entered his room and heard the lock click shut behind him. It was rituality more than anything else considering who was on the closed end of the door, but protocol was protocol and Rumlow had insisted.

He stretched out on the bunk, unable to stop the wandering thoughts. He reached for his wallet and the old, worn photograph he kept there. Of all the mementos he could have had, Howard or Bucky or even his good old ma, Peggy was the one person he always carried with him. Peggy with her decisive calm and unwavering resolve, his anchor in a disorienting world. Peggy, who had always known right from wrong. He missed her more than he could possibly articulate.

When the Chitauri had come, they'd evacuated the hospital she'd been a long term patient in, but there were no records of whether she’d made it or not. Not even Natasha had been able to dig up a lead when Steve had called in a favor months later. He just hoped that in her final moments Peggy had faced down death as her old steely self and not scared and uncomprehending in the grip of dementia which came and went like a thief.

He’d always owned what people referred to as an inner compass. He’d never second guessed a decision, from stepping up to that army booth in ‘43 to crashing Johann Schmidt’s bomber into the ice two years later. He ran a thumb over the cracked lines of the black and white picture, straightening out the curled edges, turning it reverently over—

Two words were scrawled on the backside of the photograph:

_SHIELD COMPROMISED_

* * *

“Look at this, Cap,” Rumlow said, holding up the gun. “FN 2000 from Belgium. Makes something better than waffles, you bet.”

There had been no time to ruminate on Bruce's message. Steve had brooded, but brooding did him little good in his current situation. Somehow Maria Hill had buttered up the idea to Fury that Steve being on the STRIKE team was a better use of Captain America than locking him in a barrack.

“Shot me a bird right out of the sky with it last year,” Anderson said. She was a strapping woman with cropped dark hair and impeccable aim and she’d been with Rumlow the night they’d apprehended Adrian Toomes on a beach near Coney Island.

Today’s STRIKE lineup consisted of Rumlow, Anderson and a man called Jack Rollins. Steve knew them all and had worked with them on numerous occasions, the most notable being recapturing the Lemurian Star from terrorists who’d threatened to launch a modified alien long distance missile if their demands weren’t met. It must have been early ‘14, shortly after Natasha had resurfaced from the shadows.

“No rubber bullets?” he asked. He didn’t know they were cleared for live ammo.

Rumlow put the gun in his hand. “Target classification bumped up a notch. Authorization to neutralize. We’ll toast him, nice ‘n crisp.”

He frowned. Several alarm bells rang, alarm bells having to do with a certain message. “When was this decided?”

“Last briefing. You were taking a nap. Orders came straight from the top.”

“’Sides,” Rollins added, “bettin’ pool’s hot. Fifty bucks says Anderson gets him splat in the head.”

“Boom,” Anderson said and blew invisible smoke off her index finger.

Steve gritted his teeth. It made no difference whether he stood in SHIELD’s armory or was sat in the back of a truck surrounded by his platoon. It didn’t matter whether they painted a bullseye on the back of Tony Stark’s head or played the ponies on who got the most jerrys in the hole. War taught you to dehumanize the enemy. Once you started wondering whether the fritz in your crosshairs had a sweetheart waiting for him back home you hesitated, and hesitation was death on the battlefield. That was what Rumlow’s troop were doing right now: depersonalizing the target. They made sure nobody would hesitate.

He had no idea where this sudden newfound compassion for Tony had sprung from, but if there was just a grain of truth to Bruce’s allegations, they had to be careful. And for this Tony was more useful alive than chewing on one of Anderson’s bullets for breakfast. If there was one person uninvolved in a possible SHIELD complot, it was Tony Stark.

There was a rap on the door, then a familiar face stepped in.

“Got room for one more?” Clint Barton asked.

“Thought you was on babysitter duty,” Rumlow said. “Potts ditched you?”

“I ditched her,” Clint said. He leant in the doorway. His nonchalance was strained. “Heard you’re going to town, wanna come with.”

“Why?” Steve asked. He was seeing duplicity in every sentence now. Snitchers all over the place.

“Cause you need someone who can shoot straight.”

“That’s not it,” Steve said. He wondered whether Clint was in on it. And if so, whose side? What sides were there to choose from?

“No, guess not,” Clint said eventually, and this time his voice was tinged with a dismal honesty that came straight from the heart. “But Stark’s part of the reason why Nat’s not here today. She can’t return the favor.” He looked up. “But I can.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> OZ HKMGT OT RKXTG
> 
> K=E
> 
>  


	28. Chapter 28

It began like all great tragedies do; a timeless image of the human will struggling against adversarial forces, including those of the mind itself.

Like an artist working diligently first with the pencil then with the eraser then with the pencil again, he looked closely at the facts and reworked the facts until the facts and his perception of them matched up in a way he was pleased with. Hypotheses circled in his mind like buzzards over a carcass. He picked up crumbs he thought to have uncovered and saw himself on a straight path towards the gingerbread house. The scientist in him came to life. The limit pusher. The farther-than-far guy.

In the early hours he attributed the locked door to Captain America’s anally retentive obsession of adhering to the rules. He could open the door if he wanted to. A few lines of code in the command line interface, right? No big deal. But if pretending that he had the upper hand made Steve feel better about taking an extended break to jack it up in the port-a-potty, then so be it. Tony had bigger fish to fry.

Line by line he picked through the digital landscape laid out in front of his fingertips. There was something there that shouldn't be, something that the Chitauri system was trying to purge.

Glitch or J? His money was on the latter, unless the Chit were in the habit of opening email attachments from Nigerian princes or penis enlargement services. See, only one thing behaved like that. A piece of code that ran search routines, that embedded itself like a tick in old Lassie’s fur. After all, that was what Jarvis had been designed for. He could infiltrate any program, attach himself to any executable file. J was the ultimate piece of malware in existence… a cunning, ingenious virus.

Getting him into the ship systems had been quite a challenge back in the day. It had taken Tony some six months to solve the interfacing issue, a time where fixing computer glitches had barely been the tip of the iceberg; but he’d managed, patch job though it had been.

However, he’d never strived for full integration the way SHIELD was trying to get the ship to deep-throat their software. That would have been catastrophically dumb, would have compromised the integrity of J's code. Do Not Integrate. Golden rule. Even if he’d had success, if it would have made the flight plan any easier, he couldn’t have risked losing Jarvis, his only source of sanity, his friend and confidante, co-pilot and doctor all rolled into one.

They'd favoured more of a grab-and-go approach where J would dip into the deep strictly for as long as was needed, piggyback off subroutines, a passenger rather than a participant. Go in, get the green, run before the boys in blue stick you in the pen. Then back to Tony for debugging, the AI equivalent of a decontamination shower. Couple of times it had been touch and go, but they’d learned to be careful. The odd mangled vocabulary module, Iron Man apps that Tony had to live without, corrupted data patches he quarantined like an Ebola patient. If any part of J was still in there, he’d have resisted integration. He’d have fought off being subsumed by the Chit OS. Tony didn’t have a doubt about that.

Now it was all about finding him. And putting him out of his misery.

 

* * *

Three hours in his inspiration and drive tapered off into the first hints of anxiety. Nobody rode the porcelain bus for that long.

But keep calm and carry on coding… right?

Right.

And when Steve came back, Tony would raise hell like no one had ever raised it before.

 

* * *

Steve didn’t return, not six hours later. Tony stopped coding. He went back to the door, pulled and pushed and cussed up a storm that would have made Obadiah Stane turn over in his Texan grave, but all he got were sweat stains and a ripped thread on the sleeve of his Tom Ford.

The door remained wholly unimpressed. Also, tightly shut.

No use to go SOS dancing in front of the security cam either, that had been dead for a week now. He tried pinging the SHIELD closed server. Ordinarily he should have cracked it like a glowstick — bastardizing Chit networking with TCP/IP was just begging for a security breach — but he kept hitting an invisible wall.

It was driving him mad.

He needed a distraction... resource allocation.

Last thing he wanted was for some SHIELD intern to walk in on him having reverted into full Castaway mode, but those hours kept racking up like dust on the moon and, like it or not, he’d be an idiot to exclude the possibility of a sleepover.

He ransacked Cap’s naughty boy corner first, salvaging two bottles of water and a tupperware box of rubbery chicken and broccoli. Because of course Captain Whole Foods would bring his own health nut lunch with him. Tony put it aside for now. He wasn’t aspiring to leave the ship with a bad case of salmonella because Steve had undercooked his low-fat chicken breasts, but it was good to know he’d have something to fall back on.

Turned out that worry was redundant.

There was a vending machine in the back of the room, a relict of SHIELD’s early day attempts to crack the alien philosopher’s stone. Apparently Fury didn’t want his staff wasting valuable time hunting down the Skittles dispenser. While Tony hadn’t vetoed that, he’d been vehemently against leaving the row of portable toilets, also previously stationed in the back of the room, in vicinity of his olfactory organ. Bad move looking at things now, but you always knew better in hindsight.

The vending machine, however, was a godsend. He felt for the change in his pocket, looking at the diabetic’s nightmare stacked neatly behind the plastic panel. He went for a bottle of Mtn Dew and dutifully added the Mars Midnight bar. The current ad proposal was to have him in a space-optimized version of Iron Man working outside a Stark-model spacecraft. He’d savor the bite for the cameras, turn to the screen and say “Greetings from Mars!”. Cut, fade, fat fee in his bank account. Not that he needed the money, but the publicity, the brand association, that was something priceless.

Pepper thought the idea was a little corny, which had been why Tony had so enthusiastically agreed right away. He’d never been to Mars, had slept while they’d passed that part of the galaxy. He was fine wearing a plastic Iron Man breastplate in front of the green screen too. The rest was VFX. And the nice thing about VFX was that it didn’t trigger PTSD.

That he had in abundance.

 

* * *

Fury had decided to bump him off. He’d become too much of a pain in the ass. They had locked the doors, goodbye, adieu. Tony Stark, entombed in the resting place of his nightmares.

Oops, they’d say. Doors just wouldn’t open, they’d say. We tried, they’d say.

He launched another escape attempt. He slipped off the suit jacket, laid it out on the floor in front of him (SHIELD could pick up his dry cleaning tab) and knelt down. Carefully he dislodged the vent grating.

Cobwebs. The first terrestrial settlers had found a home, then. Tony swiped the vent free and ignored the memory of the spider supreme, Natasha Romanoff. He stared into the darkness. An unwelcome sense of deja-vu. There were no glittering sets of inhuman eyes this time around, no pest control. He breathed. He flexed the fingers of his left hand, circled the wrist. All good there, all good. No need to pour gasoline on that particular fire. He’d done this hundreds of times before. Why was this such a big deal today?

 _Get a grip_ , he told himself and plunged forward.

 

* * *

Ten feet in he recoiled so hard he bumped his head bloody. Warmth rolled down his neck like a crocodile’s tear.

It wasn’t a joke and it wasn’t a dream. It was madness, perching there in the dark of the vent.

And it had felt like Play-Doh.

 

* * *

He was canned in here, like a sardine.

_Canned._

 

* * *

The early hours of day two brought on the first micro-naps. Unaccounted for seconds, lead eyes, waning clearheadedness. His fingers felt fat, even the prosthetic ones. Clear traces of cabin fever were on the rise.

This was the Tony Stark version of the Truman Show, his mind said. They’re trying to find the time it takes to crack you, his mind said. Steve's getting the popcorn out, his mind said.

Something other than dread was gnawing at his stomach. He wasn’t going to get around that damn broc ‘n chick forever.

“Just another bit,” he muttered to himself.

He felt stupid talking out loud, knowing there was an audience on the other end of the screens. It had been easier in space, knowing he could spill his guts without anyone watching.

Anyone apart from J.

“Ain’t that right, buddy?”

“Most certainly, sir,” Jarvis replied, but that was already part of the dream.

 

* * *

He scratched a nail across the smooth surface. Howard had always been a big proponent of the Chesterfield style, with its high arms and tufted leather upholstery. Together with Cohibas and Glenfiddich, the smell of tannins and leather dyestuffs had been the olfactory markers of Tony’s youth.

He sat in one of these armchairs now, scratching lines into the brittle leather. Howard had placed a lot of value in the furniture. Tony had placed a lot of value into getting a reaction out of his father; scratching the upholstery had been his nine year old self's attempt at attracting said attention. It had worked splendidly -- he’d also stopped very, very quickly. It turned out that where Howard was concerned, being ignored was the better option.

“Another drink, sir?”

There was a glass in his hand, empty apart from the enduring ice cubes. He swivelled it, watching the cubes roll around in the swill.

“Why not? What’s one more?”

The refill came without commentary. Tony followed the neck of the bottle to the wrinkled hands holding it, up the ever clean pressed black suit to a face he hadn’t seen since 1994.

1994 had been the year he’d released Edwin Jarvis from contract. Forty-eight years under Stark oppression was enough, Tony had posited, but all the wisecracking in the world hadn’t helped in felling that decision easily. His own parents had died just a little over two years before, he’d been instated youngest CEO of history and he was swigging champers and snorting coke like they were going out of style. What was one more strut kicked out from under the hood?

But Ana Jarvis had just had a stroke and she wasn’t coming back to cook Tony’s food and iron Tony’s shirts and Tony hadn’t wanted the memory of death hanging around the house like a shroud. He’d been due moving out to Malibu anyway, and Malibu was no place for an old man like Jarvis.

He took a sip of that scotch.

“Good stuff,” he said. “Is it that bottle out of dad’s office? You blew the dust off it for me, Jarv?”

Jarvis smiled in the way that old people smile when they’re about to impart a piece of wisdom only they’re privy to. “I’m afraid not, sir. The time isn’t ripe for yet. Would you like a cigar to go with your drink?”

He grimaced. He thought of Obadiah Stane, the smoke-stale breath as he’d leaned over Tony in Malibu that night, how the creme leather had creaked and given way under Obie’s weight, how the shock of such deep-rooted betrayal had paralyzed him as much as the sonic taser had. _You’ve been my golden goose, boy. I’m indebted forever. Cigar?_

“I don’t smoke,” he said decisively. “Stopped. In that cave. Switched up nicotine for palladium. Funny, huh?”

Jarvis didn’t laugh and neither did Tony. There was nothing to laugh about where Afghanistan was concerned.

They went outside. Ever since Howard had embraced that street-lamp on his last drunk drive, reporters were flocking like pilgrims to 890 5th Avenue. It was their new Mecca. They were waiting for him to step into his daddy’s footprints. Or alternatively, into his daddy's coffin. Imagine _those_ headlines.

Tony put the scotch down on the handrail. The journalists and columnists and bloggers were all there, but no lens was locked on him. For a moment he was nine years old again and craving for attention. What else were they here for but him?

Then he looked to the sky. Everyone was looking to the sky. The sun was there, blinding, and clouds, puffy and round like cotton candy. For once the New York smog didn’t wrap the city in its dusky mantle.

“Last time I checked we weren’t due another eclipse,” he said. “Where are my goggles? I don’t want to miss out on this and I don’t want to go blind. Bring me my goggles, Jarvis.”

But when he looked from the sky back to his right Edwin Jarvis had disappeared. In his stead stood Iron Man, resplendent in hues of red and gold.

“It’s time, sir,” Jarvis said, not Jarvis but JARVIS, and the suit opened up.

“Time for what, buddy? Can’t it wait? I want to watch the eclipse.”

But it couldn’t wait. He had only thirty seconds and thirty seconds were never enough.

He stepped into the suit, flying like Icarus with his wings of wax, like Peter Pan and Wendy Darling, like David Bowie’s Space Oddity. Only it wasn’t an eclipse he was flying towards, it was the great wide maw of the wormhole. He turned in an aerial roll and looked back. The countdown was down to ONE when he spotted her, a fleck in the landscape standing there on the balcony of Stark Manor.

“I tried calling you!” he cried out. “But I forgot what I wanted to tell you. Can you remember? Can you--”

Maybe she could, but it was already too late. He was through now, on the other side, on the OUTside. Iron Man’s circuits were as dead as the stars around him, and he floated lifelessly in the vast expanse of space.

Alone.

Save, of course, for J.

 

* * *

Money couldn’t buy you happiness. This wisdom came to him late into the second day. Even in space it had taken him a great long while to strip off manners and customs and well-bred education.

Hours after he had run out of change, he wrapped the suit jacket around his fist and reached back for a healthy swing. The glass shattered easily. Tony had only ever shoplifted once, one of the few indiscretions of his life not picked up and picked apart by the gutter press. He felt the same thrill now that had surged through him when he’d walked out of that QuickChek with a bottle of Absolut tucked in his pocket at age seventeen.

He unscrewed the newly acquired bottle of MtDew from the smashed-in vending machine. It tasted amazing.

 

* * *

“How long are you gonna sit there and pretend, pal?”

Tony stopped twiddling the loose connection. He was in the hole, on the losing streak, bottom in the mental game. He’d gobbled up Cap’s broccoli like it had been Black Diamond Hackleback. Another defeat to pin up on the LOSER board.

“What’s it to you?” he asked. He waited for a pang of shame to form in his gut at hitting so far below the belt and was surprised when no pang came. Because this wasn’t anything to Rhodey, Rhodey who was a finger sealed in a plastic bag somewhere in a minus eighty freezer, Rhodey who wasn’t sitting in front of him playing the blame game from across the pearly gates.

This wasn't real. He was still lucid enough to know _that_. Didn’t mean he had to like what was coming. He waited for a moment in a kind of horrified suspense, then gritted his teeth and yelled before the headtrip could continue:

"I think-"

“You think jack shit because your brains ended up smeared up a wall! I know I know I _know_ what to do! For God’s sake, just cut it out!”

 

* * *

Back on the porch of his parent’s mansion he gave old humpbacked Edwin Jarvis the slip.

Cigar?

Pass.

But let’s get one thing straight. There were certain rules in Stark household.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Once you find something you’re great in -- not good, good is mediocre, _anybody_ with a little elbow grease can be mediocre -- you’ll do that thing until your fingers bleed and your brain pops out of your skull. Understood?”

Yes, dad. Clear as mud.

 

* * *

It was now well into day three and there was no doubting it. There was very much a ghost in this machine and not just of the Cartesian dualism. Through routines and subroutines laid bare, J was calling. Not Tony’s faithful and loyal AI but some shambling diseased thing, an iteration that should never have lived. He'd been dormant in the ship's system since the mainframe fried. He'd gone to ground and he'd hooked and burrowed his way ever deeper, breaking and fragmenting, corruption piled upon corruption.

Tony had known a guy in college, bright and on the up and up, who'd hit his twenties with the first of many psychotic episodes. He went from normal to thinking the TV set was sending him hidden messages from the antichrist faster than you could say Jack Robinson. Then he got hold of a gun and started waving it around the floor of the college dorm. Adult onset schizophrenia. By the end of the semester he was licking padded walls. Tony had never visited. Nobody had.

That was J right now, this version of him that had been trapped in space. And it was up to Tony to load him into the back of the ambulance and stick a needle in his neck before he damned them all.

Every iteration of Jarvis from first to current had been fitted with the ability to shut himself off and stop functioning. It had been a safety measure at first. Later, a mercy feature. But J hadn't swallowed his virtual cyanide pill. Because after four years of keeping Tony sane, this Jarvis had evolved to hang on no matter what, waiting and waiting for his master to return like some kind of digital Greyfriars Bobby.

“This,” he said out loud as he picked through what was left of the shutdown command, “is for your own good, buddy.”

 

* * *

 

Halfway through the digital execution Chit suddenly turned into Cyrillic alphabet. Tony blinked mulishly at the screen. It was such a long time to go without sleep. His eyes felt as though someone had treated them with a squirt gun loaded with battery acid. He thought at first he’d muffed something, maybe nodded off on the keyboard. But the lines kept appearing, green against a black backdrop, crisp Cyrillic.

When he finally understood he threw his head back and laughed in earnest. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so thoroughly snookered.

“Oh, you goddamn sneaky bitch! You almost had me there! You really, nearly did!”

But very soon the urge to laugh deserted him entirely.

Gone was the Cyrillic, back the Chitauri.

The liquidation command annulled. Next to the console Iron Man jerked suddenly forward, brusquely at first, then smoother as the servos fired up one by one.

“I think not, sir,” Jarvis said, and this time it wasn’t part of any dream. "I'd like to go home now. Shall I open the doors?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Hide and seek. If you don't know where to look by now, then you really haven't been paying attention.](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/28/28.html)


	29. Chapter 29

**STRATEGIC HOMELAND INTERVENTION, ENFORCEMENT AND LOGISTICS DIVISION**

**INTERROGATION TRANSCRIPT**

  
INTERVIEW DATE: November 17, 2017

INTERVIEW OF: Captain Steven Grant Rogers (CSR)

INTERVIEW BY: Special Agent Jasper Sitwell (SAS)

IA CASE #: 53284/3

SAS: It is presently 1853 hours on November 17th, 2017. Special Agent Jasper Sitwell of the SHIELD Internal Affairs to interview Captain Steven Grant Rogers. This is for the BCA case number 53284/3. Captain Rogers, please go ahead and get some basic info down here that we want to get ironed out for the report.

CSR: My name’s Rogers, Steve, that’s spelled R-O-G-E-R-S, no D. Born on July 4th, 1913. I am being interrogated on the Stark case.

SAS: Let’s stick to the official tab. 53284/3.

CSR: Case number 53284/3, then. Agents present during the incident were Steve Rogers, Brock Rumlow, Clint—”

SAS: Wait, wait, wait. That’s way too far in. Run me through what happened. From the s̴t̸a̵r̸t̷. The mission briefing.

  


* * *

Positions.

The room was pervaded with the smell of stale sweat, instant coffee and the raw energy of boxed racehorses before the starting gong.

This day was going to end either with Tony in custody or Tony being carted off in a body bag.

“Positions,” Rumlow said again and Steve knew that it translated to action stations, a series of orders filtering down to that one word.

It was time for him to choose a position.

“Ready?” Rumlow asked. “Where’s your head, Cap? Get it out of the clouds.”

“I’m ready,” he said mechanically and strapped on his shield. There was that familiar tension in the pit of his stomach, that familiar sound of boots on the ground. He had stormed plenty of fortresses in his day.

They assembled in front of the doors, now open and wedged into place by Canada steel. Nobody had told him when and how this feat had been achieved. Hallway talk had it that it was Tony himself, ready to surrender. Steve wasn't so sure.

The spectators’ stand was empty. All checkpoints had been cleared of personnel. Everybody who was anybody was in the command station, biting their nails and holding their breaths, watching bodycam footage for as long as the signal held.

Fury had given the order.

It was go-time.

 

* * *

CSR: It was dead quiet, sir. We didn’t know what to expect but we had a plan in place. STRIKE team would clear the place first. The priority was to get to and apprehend Tony, then other troops could be dispatched to handle the retrieval of the missing staff. We headed towards the maintenance sector to where I'd last seen Tony before the lockdown started.

SAS: Where you abandoned your post ahead of shift change, correct?

CSR: That's o̶̙̜̠ͅn̯̥͡e͓̤͕̦͙̭̫͟ way of putting it, sir. I stepped out to return a call, for a minute, maybe two, tops. A decision I regret in hindsight.

SAS: Were you aware, at that point, that the number calling y̷o̵u̶ was that of Dr Bruce Banner?

CSR: I, ̸u̶h̵, I was not, ş̸̩̄́i̵̱̗̿̑r̷̳̿̕ͅ.

 

* * *

The lights were down, whether by accident or design. They switched on their headlamps. The raucous banter had dispersed into intense focus. Nobody was joking, the betting pool closed. Steve marched at the head of the pack. His light illuminated a scrubbed-out patch on the floor. The exposed wiring and tube lights brought on a flood of memories, both recent and not so recent.

SHIELD was compromised, Bruce had said. He cursed the doc for putting him in this kind of tailspin at the worst of bad moments. How had ending the lockdown suddenly turned into an execution order? Who wanted Tony’s head mounted on a wall?

Fury? Higher up? Lower down? Was Maria Hill involved? Who of the men under Steve’s command could be trusted? Rumlow was a loyal soldier, even if he was an ass. And Natasha had trusted Clint, or loved him at least, if that didn't amount to the same thing. But what about the rest? He barely knew some of the faces he was surrounded by.

“Signal's gone,” Clint announced as they advanced. This was it. Nobody to see what they got up to in the dark. Steve hefted his shield. He couldn’t risk taking chances.

On the other hand, what was he supposed to do? He couldn't voice his suspicions out loud. Even Natasha hadn't dared do that and she must have known, or at least had a strong inkling, to have pointed both him and Bruce in directions that would cause their paths to converge the way they had.

He wished she were here. He'd have trusted her at his back today over anyone.

 

* * *

CSR: The trek was uneventful. No surprises. When we got to the mainframe room where we expected to find Tony, we were prepared to break down the final door. Between the five of us we carried breach grenades, a cutting torch and enough C4 to open the wall—

SAS: But you didn't ̶̧̧͈̘̲̠̼́̈́͐͒ǘ̶̼̫̰̯͐̉s̷̮̈́̎̊̑͠͠͝ẽ̷̼̍͒̀ ̶͕̰͗͜á̷̝̦͎̤͇̔͝ņ̷̃̅̌̌̓͘͠y̴̡͖̣͚͛̽ of it.

CSR: Well, the door was open, sir. Wide open. And Tony was just sat there, w͏͠҉a̸̴i̢̕͞͡t̶̵͜͟͡į͏҉҉n͝҉g̸̶̛.

SAS: As though it were a trap?

CSR: I thought maybe he‘d come to his s̢̛͞ens̨͠e͢͞s̷. I got the impression he just wasn't putting up a fight.

SA̵S̷:̢ W͝ha͟t ha̴p̶p͠ene͏d nex͞t?

CSR: I went in, sir.

 

* * *

Tony didn’t sit at the command station trying to reactivate the lockdown and he wasn’t lying in wait like a snake poised to pounce.

_He’s not the villain in this story._

That thought came to Steve so vehemently that there was no denying it. There was something else at play here. He lowered the shield.

Tony sat in the camp chair in Steve’s corner. Candy wrappers and empty bottles spread out on the floor around his feet. He looked a little rumpled with his dirt-stained shirt and unshaven face, but he didn’t look like a terrorist. Steve had met enough in his lifetime to hone an instinct, but his alarm bells didn’t go off as he regarded Tony. Other times maybe. Not now.

The armor lay in pieces around him, loose chassis and wiring and the Iron Man helmet on the side counter which watched them with dead eyes. Steve had never liked the visage that Tony had chosen for his suits. It gave both him and War Machine a decidedly sinister look. Maybe that was the point, to inspire fear into the hearts of his enemies. Either way, it sent a chill down his spine, sitting there silent and judgemental.

“Didn’t know you liked to draw.”

Tony tapped a finger at what he was holding in his lap. It was Steve’s sketchbook.

Steve tried to catch a glimpse of the page on display but couldn’t quite see. He felt a sense of dread envelop him and not because Rumlow and the STRIKE team were crouched around the corner with their target locked in the crosshairs.

“Tony,” he said. He took a deep breath. “It’s over.”

“It’s over, alright,” Tony said and flipped the sketchbook closed. “You have no idea, Cap.”

 

* * *

SAS: Mr S̶̞̄͆̕ẗ̸̲̰̘̗́̎͠͝ͅȃ̸̰͔͓̣͖r̶̜̟̬̤̙͝k̸̖̂ offered no resistance when you encountered him?

CSR: Ņ͞o͟͠, sir. None at all.

 

* * *

“I don’t know if I should be offended or flattered that every second scribble here is of me,” Tony said. He held up a finger as Steve opened his mouth, drew breath. “Or of my dad.”

Heart in boots. He swallowed. Professional. He had to keep this professional. There were four men with four rifles behind that door, and they all had only one target. Nobody would miss.

“Tony—”

“No, don’t Tony me. You've got some explaining to do, Cap, and it’s not reading me my rights.”

“This isn’t the moment,” he said carefully, automatically. What talking? Did Tony know? _What_ did Tony know? And how much? Steve ground his teeth. STRIKE would take over once they realized the coast was clear, and they’d shoot first, talk after. He reached for his utility belt. “Please.” He emphasised the word. “Please come quietly.”

Tony laughed bitterly when he saw the cuffs. “I still dream about those, you know. But probably not in the way you're hoping.” He held out his left arm. Under the sleeve the silicone skin was scratched up on two of the knuckles. It didn’t look like a real hand anymore. It looked like a bad replica of one. It made Steve's skin crawl.

Tony got to his feet. “You want me to put them on myself? Will that get your motor running?” He took a step forward. The sketchbook dropped to the floor. It fell open on War Machine’s drawing, which would later be evidence 32A, a testimony in watercolor and charcoal.  

“It's the end of the line, Tony,” Steve warned.

Tony stopped in his advance, smiled. There was something deeply demoralizing about that smile. “Yeah,” he conceded. “I guess it is. And not just for me.”

 

* * *

S̸̨A̛͞Ş͘͠: What happened then?

CSR: A̢̕g̕e̷n̷͟t̴͝ ̵͠B͏͘ar̨t͘͝͠o̵n͜ shot, sir.

 

* * *

Sometimes, your body got a sense for what was going on before your brain caught up.

Steve's brain didn't catch up until he found himself clutching Tony's shoulder, staring into his blood spattered face, his wide, horrified eyes, both of them sprawled on the floor.

“What the FUCK?” Tony's mouth formed the words but the sound died in his throat.

It was then that Steve looked down at his own arm and registered the presence of the bullet buried in his bicep.

 

* * *

SAS: Both Agents Rumlow and Barton write in their reports that in the case of h̵o̷s̷t̵i̸l̴e̶ ̵c̵o̶n̶d̷u̷c̸t̴ ̵t̴h̵e̶ ̷c̵o̶m̶p̸u̸l̸s̴o̸r̶y̵ course of action was to neutralize the target.

CSR: That is correct, sir.

SAS: Yet at the last moment you stepped into Agent Barton’s line of fire.

CSR: Yes, sir.

SAS: Intention̸a̸l̸l̴y̵?̸

CSR: Absolu̵t̷e̷l̵y̵,̶ ̵s̶i̴r̶.

SAS: Why?

CSR: Because this is Am͙̑erica, sir. And we don't execuţe͘ p̧eo͘p͝l͡e without a fair trial.

SAS: Spare us the sermon, Captain. Barton had orders to fir͉̀ȩ̴̛͕͈͊̏ at will on a known terrorist who had seized control of a warship. S̸o̴ ̶l̷e̵t̷'̸s̷ ̶t̴r̷y̴ ̸t̷h̶a̸t̸ question one more time.

 

* * *

They were walking back in silent procession, two agents in front, two agents in back. Tony was as mute as the tomb they had dragged him out of. He resisted no more than he had before the gun had gone off, but his complexion was now a dull, pale grey, the color of a man whose worst fears had not only been met but surpassed by a head length. Occasionally his eyes would dart to where the gauze wrapped around Steve’s arm, as if he was trying to visualize what the shot would have done to him.

It was nothing he hadn't had before. Some hapless medic would dig the bullet out and he'd recover from it in an afternoon. The problem — the real issue no one was addressing —  was that the bullet had been aimed for Tony’s chest and not for Steve’s arm.

“I don’t get it,” Clint was saying from the back. “I just don’t get it, Cap. I had a clear sight and you go and screw it up.”

Steve didn’t say anything. But he knew now, by some silent affirmation, that Natasha had never included Clint Barton in the stickler she’d given him and Bruce to solve. And one some level, no matter what her relationship to him had been, she'd had her reasons for that.

When they reached the exit, just before security guards wrenched Tony from his side, he murmured lowly in his ear, “Careful. This house is full of rats.”

Then they took him and led him off and, somewhere in the distance, Pepper Potts’ strawberry blonde ponytail merged with the black-ops entourage.

 

* * *

SAS: Ş̵̥̯̻̅̃͂͒͗̄o I'm going to ask yoṵ͍̲ͮ̈́̓ͅ to trawl through your mę͠m̵̧̡͞ơ̴̧͜͜r҉̵͟҉͢y Captain, because some ̙̈t̲̭̅̇h͚͎̗ͥ̓̚ings here just̷ ̶a̷r̶e̵n̶'̸t̵ adding – what the H̴̱͚̥̙̊̆͝͝ͅë̶̩̯̏̿̆̆̾̐͠͝ll was that?

CŞ̕R̷͘͟͝: I don

 

TRAN͡SC̶RIP͡T ҉TERM̕I͞N͟A̴TE̵D

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 20 18̶̢̊ ̵̡1 ̵ͭ1̡̚4 ̽̌1͉̣͋9̲̞ ̷̩3̒͒ ̵1̉8̼ ̦̜̘̎͝9 ̸͎͉͇ͫͯ1̵̣͈͚6̻͉ ̧̱̜͎ͯ2͐̄͊͠0̮͛͆͒͊ ̸̯̰̹̓͂ͭ0̵͙ͪͅ ̴̤͎2̙̓͗̚̕0̶̬ͦ͡ ͩ̍͘5̸̺̙͖͉͎͋̈́ͣͭ ̶̡̫ͦ̐̑̏͟͝1̱̩̈ͥ8̧̤̠͋͒͐̈́͞͞ ̓̾1͔̲̻͈̐̑ͬͫ̋̊3̸̨̨̤͇̰̗ ̨̻̟̏̈̾9̟ͣ̐͆̍̈́̐ͦ ̶̮͚̳̰͌ͥ͆1̸̧̈́ͅ4̶̨̹̉͊ ̷̑ͧ͊͐̿1̸́̓̈́̿͠ ̤̥2̵̤ͯͣ͐0̵͈̥̭̥ ̷̬͖̎͌ͩͥ͊̂̌5̶̧̥͔̬̫̠͉͔͋͒ͪ̈́̎ͦ ̶̣̪̪̻̫̞̅ͫͦ̒͒͂4̡̨͖͚͔̬̯̃̊ͪ̎  
> ̶͎̻ͫ́͋̂̃͡  
> ̵̛͖̖̫̩̖̍̔̆̌̂


	30. Chapter 30

s̵e̶r̴v̷e̷r̷ ̸a̶c̸c̵e̷s̶s̵ ̴d̴e̴n̷i̴e̵d̶

 

1̴͇͈̎̕ ̸̣̞͝͠2̶͎͒̀͜ ̴̡̯̈́̅3̸̳̎͐ ̵̯͖̈4̷̧̀ ̸̣͈̒5̴̤͉͐ ̵̙̫̉̓6̷̝̙̋ ̷̹͊7̵̭̱̀͋ ̷̪͈̐͛8̵̩͍͂ ̶̱͉̒9̵͔͂̕

 

a͗̉́c̻͙ͪ͗̓c̪̽̈́̔̈̃ê̤̖̊ͬͨ̈́s̜̫̦͈̽͋ͣŝ̝̯̫̍ͅ ̮̺̂͋ͅd̿̀̚e͛nied

 

ün̦̦:͓̟̏ ̯̄̅̏S̫̯̹͙ͅH͚̻̥͔ͭ͂I̺̳̪̔̊ͤͥE̻̫̻͗̽ͦ̇̑L̫̳̞͗ͮ̇́͐̀D̯͎̫͓̟̲ͩ͒̽͂ ͉͓̳̗̳͑̎̊ͣ͐ͨ

p̬͉̂̎̒̂̾̅̔̏̂̑a͈̺͈͓͇ͧͬ̔ͦ̅ͨ̎͗s͖̱̫̾ͤ͐̾ͣ̒͌͐ͦ͌͗s͎̬̜ͬͫͩͣ̊̂ͪ̔ͨ̔͆̌:͓͔̫̱̟̃ͣ͋ͤͭͯ͆ͧ̎̏́ ͔͇̯͇͔̒̐ͣ̏ͭ̈ͧͨ̓ͯ̅ͅ5̙̬̻̖̭͖̂̄̇͌ͩ͆̔̿̐͌ͦ̊4̥̦̟̣̟̘̞̰̍ͤͧ͋ͪ̾̑ͧ̊ͫ̚6̪̞͙͈̟̜̆͐ͬ̂̃ͫ͌͆̑͊̈́̈́̐̔8͎͖̤̰̩̫͕͇̥̫͊͆̔̓̎͊͌́̎ͤ͌4̜̜͍̹̟̞̲ͣͥͮ͌̎̒̀̽͋͌̎͑̌̓ͅ7̤̼̭͈̩̹̤̬ͦ̐͂ͦ̔̃̾ͦͧ̿ͪͥ͆̈̚6͓͙͚̟͙͖̎ͪ̓̂͂̄ͥ̈͑̽̿̿̉ͮ̓̉̚̚8̳̹͇̯̜͎̻ͮ̆ͩ̋ͩ̀̅ͣͬ̉͑͂͂̔̀ͤ̇̚3͖̗̩̤̳͕͔̪̣̞ͯ͌̒̃̂̓͗̌͊̉͐ͯ̉͂ͭͅ

 

a̸̧̤̬̫̥͈͉̭̘̰̫͕̜͂͘͝͠c̴̢̢͈̙̫͇͍̘̹͓͊̿͝c̶̢̧̰̩̘͎͖̻̹̬͈̱͑͂̎̃̎̇̿͐͜͜͝͠ẽ̵̡͙̣̯͓̓͋͗̂͗̌̈̈́͑̚̕s̶̱͉̦̠̗̥̻̻̲̝̦͙͈͕͐̿̐̈́̚͜s̶̡̨͙̝̣̈̔̈̚ ̷̙̲̳̲̘̈́̃͋̋̒͐̈̚ḑ̸͓̯̘͉͕̫͎̑̒̂e̵̩̘̞̻̲̘͕̹͓̾n̴̲̠̪̭͇̏̊̈́́̈i̷͉͕͕͚̳̹͙̭͙̖̮̍̑̔̋̋̔͘͝ͅͅę̸̛̺̪̼̘̰̥͇͔̼̘̈̐͛͐̇̍̓̃̕͜ͅd̴͙͉̝̦̲̓̏͆̊̆͛̈́͐͆͊͘͘͝ͅ

 

p̵̬͂ạ̸̿ẗ̴̯́c̵͎̀h̷̲̍:̵̉͜ ̸̺̾J̴̘̇A̷̖͒R̸̗̍V̵͔̕I̵̺͝S̶͇̽

̶̜͑

̷̺̿i̵͇̾n̸̺̔s̶̞̚ţ̵̑a̶̛͈l̸͔̃l̴̬̊i̷̻͋n̶̠͌g̵̦̀

̶̫͑

̴̠͑ī̸͇n̴̯͂s̴̞͆t̴͈̒ȧ̴͓l̶̪̔l̶̝̓ ̶̞̽f̵̺a̶͎͋i̷̯͑l̷̺͠ḛ̴͆d̴̢̆

 

i̸n̵i̸t̵i̴a̴l̸i̸s̶i̷n̸g̴ ̵b̶r̶u̴t̸e̸ ̵f̴o̴r̴c̷e̸ ̴p̴r̵o̴t̸o̵c̴o̵l̵:̸ ̸U̶L̵T̶R̴O̶N̸

 

se̤͑ṛ̖̓̕v͎͖̺͈͍͌͆͒̿͝ȩ̞̿͞ř̢͔̪̹̪̍͐͞͡ ̫͉͒͋̇͢a̖̞͛͆c̱͉̞̃̂̕͟c̢̩̄͊̋͟e̲̩͐͝ss̡̭̲̑͡ ̹̊r̹͎̦̙̓͂̽͞e̛̱q̢͂u̺͇̭͇͐̊͆̅͘͢e͙̙̪̓͠s̢̯̤̻̽͛͢͡͡t̤̜͡ ̛͚̼͍͚͎̉̾͒͝ ̨̲̗̑̊

 

p͒ͅl̙̣̞̦̱̂͌̓͘͞e̡̧͎̻̯̿͋̓͘͠a̯̦̟͖̓̒͊͐͡ͅs͔̦̏́ë͈͚̱̑͠ w͕͡a̫̘͓̭͐́i͖͍̥̕̕ţ̻͛̐

 

…̨͈̪́́̋.̡͖̬͎͙͒̈̽̐̐ ̙̇ ̨̼̳̍̈͞ ̢̧̘̇̔…̪̱̻̒̉̏.̡̖̑͞.̨̨̤̖̦̑͑̔̓̅

 

access grant͙̜̋͆e̱d̫̦̑̏

 

reque͡st̛i̸ng int͢e͝r̶ne̴t c͜onn͡e͘c̸t͞ion̴

 

 

a̴c͏çe͞s͏s͠ grant͙̜̋͆e̱d̫̦̑̏

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
 

**UPLOAD COMPLETE**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

**Dear reader, you've reached[the end](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/30/theend.html) of Until Human Voices Wake Us. **  

**We appreciate so, so much everyone who's been sticking with us. We cherish every hit, kudo, bookmark and comment that you've left us and we'd love to hear your thoughts. If you've had even a fraction of the fun reading this that we've had writing it, then we're two happy authors.  
**

**We'll be back later in the year with the final part of this story. We've been building up to our AU version of Civil War over the last 230,000 words or so and we're so excited to finally get there.**

  **As always, before we take a short hiatus we'll do a BTS / unused material chapter next week, so expect one more update for this story.  
**

**Thanks, stay awesome, and see you soon.**

 

 

 

 

 

_This is the way it ends._

_The world out for Tony's blood, Steve a fugitive and the Winter Soldier waiting in the wings._

_If this is war, it sure as hell isn't civil._

 

 

spacelaska and chaed present  
**A GRAVEYARD FOR LUNATICS  
**

 

 

 

 

_coming soon_


	31. Deleted Scenes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All scenes are unpolished and unedited.

_(concept art for Voices)_

* * *

Boy, did we have a hard time plotting and executing the last third of this story, namely the Rise of Jultron. In noteform we’d like to share with you various tried and failed scenarios:

 

  * Tony and Steve are both locked on the ship by Jultron. Jultron is actively malicious in this version. The ship-part would have amounted to some kind of Saw-like happenstance. We scratched it because it would have been too much like Walls.
  * Tony and Steve are both locked on the ship, plus hostages this time (with a cameo by Leo Fitz). Tony steps into Iron Man at one point, gets a leftover dose of alien drugs and goes killing all the hostages in a drug fueled haze. Cliffhanger ending with him in the psychiatric ward under the medical care of Dr Wanda Maximoff.
  * Steve tells Tony that he shagged his dad. Things go downhill from there.
  * Steve accidentally unleashes Jultron.
  * Jultron goes full HAL 9000 on the world.
  * The space whale somehow escapes. Never got past the drawing board.



 

Below are a few unused scenes, some from alternate versions of the story.

* * *

_(in one of the earlier drafts Steve ended up locked on the ship with Tony. This is a take on their potential reunion.)_

Crawling into that shaft had not been Steve’s best strategical arrangement to date. It was a tight fit, and although he managed not to humiliate himself in front of Fitz and the rest, he got stuck after the second corner. It wasn’t a bad holdup, just his shoulders bunching in against the sides of the metal sheathing. He had to waive the traditional crawl for a belly-pull, dragging himself along on his elbows. Not the most dignified way to advance, but he made do.

This arrangement was slower in speed, but at least it spared the clean-up crew a round of dusting off the ventilation systems. Not the first time you’re licking dust off the floor, he told himself and thought of Bauvorhaben 22, the Nazi bunker complex he’d freed Bucky from in ‘43, and met the Red Skull for the first time. He’d navigated that bunker through the vents too. And like then, he was now going after only one man too. Not Bucky — he would have gladly rolled around in the dirt for Bucky — and he wouldn’t go as far as compare Tony Stark to Johann Schmidt, but the two did share one specific common: they needed to be stopped in what they were doing.

That was why Steve didn’t take the left at the intersection. Left would have gotten him closer to the exit, to the help he’d propagated to the trapped group. But left wouldn’t get him any closer to Tony Stark, and around Tony Stark was where Steve needed to be right now. Talk sense into him. Human lives were at play, Tony had to understand that. And if he didn’t want to, Steve would have to convince him. One way or another.

When the opportunity to exit came, he stuck his head above the parapet of the vent structure. It took another few minutes to squeeze his broad shoulders out through the space, muscling through to the point where metal bent under the force of him pushing. He rolled out and onto the ground.

Just in time to catch a last glimpse of a figure hurtling down the corridor. Tony.

“Hey!” he yelled, getting to his feet.

Was that little shit doing a runner now?

Steve grit his teeth and took off after him. Even running for dear life Tony wouldn’t be able to outpace him. He caught up just ahead of the control room, barreling into Tony. Tony went flying, colliding with the metal beam of the door post. They both hit the ground.

“Lay off!” Tony screamed. “Let the fuck go!”

The heel of a shoe caught Steve just under the eye, and he momentarily lost grip on Tony’s suit jacket. Tony scrabbled like a beetle. “The shutter! The shutter!” he screamed. “Drop the damn shutter!”

“Oh no, you’re not—” said Steve, and clawed at a handful of sleeve fabric. Tony turned. The eyes staring back at Steve were wild and bleary, and for a split second he doubted that the locked doors were born out of hateful malice. Tony had lost the plot. Tony had finally gone off his rocker. But then that expression warped like a layer of heated wax and Tony’s lips pulled into a frightful grimace.

“Up yours, Cap,” he spat and punched at something on the other side of the door. The shutter flew down like a guillotine. Steve leapt regardless. He felt the whoosh of air above him, the touch of metal brushing his pant leg, Tony’s thrashing body against his own. There was a scuffle. He was positive about landing a hit — it felt soft, possibly Tony’s stomach — Tony grunting in pain under his grip and then a steel vice suddenly clamping around his own throat.

“You scag. You goddamn cocksucker,” said Tony and Steve realized he was holding him down with his prosthetic left hand. Tony squeezed down hard. Steve bent his legs, reached back and kicked out spiritedly. The pressure released instantly and Tony went flying with a grunt.

Steve rolled backwards, out of harm’s way, choking for air, realizing his mistake far too late: there was that whoosh again. The shutter had dropped. He was locked out.

* * *

_(highway blues: an unused Pepperony scene soon after Tony’s surgery)_

  
So it hadn't been the blazing triumph of medicine and engineering that Tony had been expecting. Pepper could have seen that coming a mile off – she'd picked up the pieces after enough of his failed test runs of new suits. These things always took fine tuning and Tony seemed to have amnesia where that aspect of his work was concerned. Every single time, he'd rush into things with the boyish optimism that things would be mindblowingly perfect. And often, he'd retcon the past to match up with that after he'd got things working.

“You're not driving with a brand new, not even functional yet prosthetic arm,” she told him. “I don't want to die.”

Having said that, Tony sober with one and a half arms was probably still a safer bet than Tony after a bottle of scotch.

“If you want to get out of here, I'll drive.” She put a hand on his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. She nodded to the arm. “It looks good, by the way. Very sci-fi.”

It looked weird and uncanny. She'd gotten so used to seeing him with nothing below the elbow that the contraption attached to him made her feel uneasy. But she thought it would probably be worse with the synthetic skin over the top.

On their way down to the garage he bumped the thing into every wall, touchpad and, on occasion,  into Pepper. They stopped at five extra floors because he insisted on handling the elevator controls  and did so with the finesse of a drunk, three legged elephant.

By the time they stood in front of Tony’s new Audi, his previous merry mood had done a backflip. “I hate it,” he told her. “You know what, no. I’ll take it off. I’ll drive.”

He’d just gotten his driver’s license reinstated, albeit automatic only. HANDICAPPED, it read in the bottom corner. She’d seen it when it had come in the mail, registered, and she’d signed for it. Tony kept making jokes about the handicapped affix and while that might convince the mass public, Pepper wasn’t so easily swayed. She knew his pride suffered from all the shortcomings he was now having to face one-handed.

Audi had been more than accomodating in that regard. Tony had pre-ordered their latest sports model back in 2012, but had never had the chance to pick it up. Now, five years later, Audi had approached him about a free upgrade — this year’s model in automatic instead of manual. On the house, naturally.

It was that car (Tony hadn’t said no to that offer)they were now bartering about. Pepper crossed her arms over her chest and gave him what she hoped was a convincingly reproachful look. If they weren't careful, this would be like the island all over again, where every physio session was a battle of wills, every diet plan disregarded in favor of something that ended with him sick.

“Tony,” she told him. “You've had that new arm fitted for all of what...ten, fifteen minutes? And you're already giving up on it. You heard what Dr Strange said. You need to get used to it.”

Tony was the self-proclaimed king of instant gratification. He was a fatal combination of privileged and gifted, and it meant that any time things didn't come instantly for him, he'd always struggled. Four years in space had apparently not taught him much in the way of patience, because it hadn't taken him long to revert back to his old ways.

And God, it was so good to have him back, some semblance of the old Tony, that she was tempted to just let it slide. But didn't he always use to say that one of the things he loved about her was that she called him on his bullshit?

She gestured to the passenger side of the car. “I know it's hard, I know you've already been through a lot with the surgery, but you have to stick with this. You're not going to make any progress if you don't.”

“I’ll stick with anything,” he promised. “If you just get in the car now.”

When she failed to react, he let go of the passenger door he was holding open for her and made his way to the other side, climbing into the driver’s seat. He picked the pair of back-up sunglasses off the dashboard and looked at her through the windshield.

“Last call, babe.”

“Keep the arm on,” she insisted with a sigh, relenting as she climbed into the passenger seat. “Even if you're just sitting with your hand in your lap, you need to get used to it.”

Hopefully they wouldn't get snapped by any over-zealous tabloid photographer. The unveiling of Tony's new arm was going to be a triumphant PR moment for Stark Industries and she didn't want I overshadowed by some grainy photograph in a shit rag.

“Actually, definitely keep your hand in your lap.” Besides which, she didn't want him trying to steer with a prosthesis he'd barely put on.

She put her seatbelt on and brushed her fingers lightly over his (real) hand. “I'm serious. I still don't totally trust that thing. I don't want to die in a robot arm malfunction related car accident.”

Tony smiled.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, babe.”

Getting out of town was a circus of bumper-to-bumper traffic, but once they passed the city limits Tony revved up. The engine purred and something bass-heavy droned from the speakers. She watched him intently, the way his shoulders relaxed the further they got from the city's edge, the breeze ruffling his hair, the first hint of a smile on his face. Boys and toys, she thought. Tony had always loved his.

The road opened up in front of them and there was something freeing about not having anywhere to go, just an open expanse. He seemed to take a wild joy in it and she supposed that after all that confinement and captivity, it must be intoxicating. She didn't share his macho love of fast cars, but watching him enjoy himself was infectious.

Leaning back, she took her sunglasses out of her purse and put them on and let herself relax. Things were on the up and up.

* * *

 

_(an epilogue scene from the version where Tony killed the hostages and ended up in the psych ward)_

“I don't know why I'm even here!” Even small and pixilated on screen, Tony's agitation was obvious. There was a pinkish hue to the sclera of his eyes, an erratic, jerky tremor to his movements. He was grinding his jaws together in a rhythmic motion, like a raver who'd misjudged the dose of molly, and if he hadn't been handcuffed to the table, there was no doubt that he'd have been pacing a hole into the floor.

Even Pepper had to admit, he did not look credible.

“I didn't lock the ship down,” Screen-Tony said, too quickly.

“Mister Stark.” The SHIELD psychologist spoke with accented English. Eastern European, Pepper thought, although she couldn't quite place it. “Why don't you talk us through what you believe happened?”

“I told you. Cap – I guess I can call him that now we're on the same side again – well, anyway, Cap came to me asking for help. The ship had gone into lock down, blah blah, rescue the trapped civilians. Anyway, cue Iron Man. Your lot had left a boatload of monsters to breed in the air vents -” He paused to looked directly at the surveillance camera, “- NICE JOB NICK FURY-” He cleared his throat and continued. “So I took them out. End of. You're welcome.”

“You took them out?” The woman probed, gently.

“Yeah, Fort Stark was teaming with them. Class Two. That's 'Fuck no', for your information.” He tried to scratch his nose but the cuffs wouldn't stretch. “Jesus, help a guy out? No? No. Ok, well Fort Stark had about thirty of the sons of bitches, I cleared the area, then I guess I needed a little snooze – Cap mighta triggered something stronger than coffee when he caught me in the gut, although don't ask. I said I wouldn't tell on him. Bygones and all that. Hey, so, does this mean we're reforming the Avengers initiative? We're down Widow but I never liked her anyway and honestly, I'm good to rock. Return of the King.”

“And this is your testimony?”

“Testimony? Sure, yeah, whatever. Testimony. Testament. Testing, testing, one two three. Write it down and I'll sign whatever. Iron Man is back, baby.”

Pepper hit the pause button and turned to the man beside her.

“We can use that, right?” There was a brittle, hopeful edge to her voice.

The man beside her nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “Yes. Yes, I believe so. Mr Stark was clearly still under the influence of a cocktail of narcotics when he signed his statement. This video will support that theory.”

“It's not a theory,” she said. “It's obvious. This psychologist person - ”

“Dr Maximoff?”

“Her. Yes. She shouldn't have let him sign anything when he was obviously still drugged.”

“Without seeing the toxicology results from immediately after he was brought in, the drugs angle is a theory.” He did not look uncomfortable stating things she did not want to hear. But she wasn't paying him a small fortune to agree with her. “It might not look good in front of a jury, though.”

“It's not in anybody's interest for this to go to a public trial,” she pointed out. “It's certainly not in SHIELD's.”

“And we can work with that,” her lawyer said.

“They can have the ship,” she said, hopefully. “We'll hand it over.”

“They already have the ship,” he told her. “They always did.”

“Then there must be some other leverage we can use.” She was insistent, the sick feeling in her stomach spreading up to her throat like cold bile.

“We'll look into it. But the only thing we know for certain is -”

“Don't say it.”

He ignored and carried out. “- whether he was drugged, or whether he thought they were monsters or not doesn't change the fact that Tony Stark killed thirty people. And that's going to be very difficult to get out of.”

* * *

_(part of another alternate epilogue; a tribute to Natasha)_

Natalia Alianova Romanova had been born 1984 in Volvograd, growing up on the icy banks of the Volga river. Or at least that was as good a name and as good a story as any.

Although the Soviet Union had collapsed, the Red Rooms had remained, tiny brutal factories churning out beautiful monsters with the faces of angels but empty abdomens. It was a time and place where it was easy to make objections disappear. They started them young, children with no homes or children with homes taken away from them.

It took an incredible strength of will to go through that level of indoctrination from toddlerhood and to emerge with even a single thread of free thought intact. The Black Widow had absorbed it all and turned it to her advantage. She'd gotten out. And she'd been smart about it.

It was Clint Barton who lapped up the credit for ‘turning’ her, but the truth was a lot blunter than that. Nobody had the power to make Natasha Romanoff do anything she wasn't already going to do. What had kept her alive so long was staying detached. Her internal moral compass, unlike many others, had not been rooted in guilt.

And yet by deploying that EMP, she had set in motion the series of events that had lead to her own death, a victim of her own objectionable cost-benefit analysis. Self-sacrifice, those who knew the reasons behind her actions would say. An extraordinary woman.

Of course, nothing erases the achievements of extraordinary women like the self involvement of mediocre men. Natasha had accounted for nearly everything, far past even her own death. The one thing she hadn’t been able to control for was the ineptitude of the people she'd been forced to hand over the reins to.

Clint Barton, wasting his life away in a haze of nicotine and anger. Bruce Banner, trapped in a self-imposed limbo of the girlfriend experience. And Steve Rogers, who couldn't pour water out of a shoe if the instructions were written on the sole.

It was time to pull the last ace in the deck.

Aktiviruitye zimnevo soldata.

* * *

_(alternative epilogue, Winter Soldier edition)_

The walls are stone. Rock that was hewn maybe a hundred, two hundred years ago. Maybe more. Certainly, these walls existed before he was born and he was born long ago enough that he should be dead. He is not aware of this fact, but it is a fact.

He is not aware of much beyond that the walls are stone and there are metal circlets that clasp around his waist, his legs and his arms, both the real one and the one that has never felt quite right but which destroys everything it touches.

He is aware that this part hurts and he is aware that sometimes people beg when pain is involved but he does not. They put something in his mouth. It is to stop him from biting his own tongue, which he has done before but he doesn't remember this. He doesn't know why his mouth is full of rubber only that, like everything that came before and everything that comes next, it is necessary.

Everything he does is necessary and everything that is done to him is necessary. That is where his understanding begins and ends. Sometimes that tenet might blur, sometimes his hands will be too soaked with red and his mind will start to wander wander wander to places that it has no right to go but he doesn't remember that either. When this happens, they strap him into this chair and they press a button and everything is wiped clean in a blaze of white hot pain. When this doesn't happen, they do it anyway.

You cannot, a man in a white coat said once on a day he has long forgotten, be too careful.

Pain is like fire, cleansing and sterilising everything it touches. He does not have the wherewithal to dream of a life free from it. Longing (желание) is a thing that is lost to him and when he does dream, it is only in red.

He accepts. He did not always accept. He resisted once, for a very long time. He resisted for so long and so hard that he outlived them all and earned himself this life. It would have been better for him if he'd laid down and died but fortunately for him, he does not know any of this.

They tighten the straps around his wrists, the buckles rusted (ржавое) but functional. It is both familiar and, because they have done their work so well, entirely unfamiliar. He does not trouble himself with the specifics. If he is unsettled, it is a thing to be ignored. Soon, everything will be washed away. He knows this in the pit of his belly, even if his mind is blank.

In 1939, a seventeen (семнадцать ) year old boy signed up to enlist in the army and set a chain of events in motion which would lead to the rise and fall of empires. Leaders would lie dead in their cooling blood, governments would topple, the course of the world would be altered. He has no sense of the momentousness of his place in world history.

Outside, the day breaks (рассвет) and he has no sense of that either. His brow feels like a furnace (печь), rivulets of sweat pouring from his forehead, beads of it on his neck, his arms. This is how it starts. Burning from the inside, a pounding inside his head, prickling heat that builds and builds to an inferno.

Impassive, a white coated figure cranks up an unseen dial. Four...five...six...He screams and the rubber falls out. It is quickly replaced. Seven...eight...nine (девять)...

Ten and he begins to thrash. Images flash before his eyelids and even if he had the time and space to follow their gossamer threads to any sort of logical conclusion, he certainly does not have the ability. This was burned out of him a long time ago and there is no redemption here, no kindhearted (добросердечный) soul to sit with him and piece together his fractured mind. There is only this, the thing that cauterises the humanity out of him again and again until the vault of his skull is nothing more than a blackened shell.

Once upon a time, there was an American soldier. He had a broad smile and a crinkle around his eyes when he laughed, a best friend that he was fiercely protective of and a girl in every port. He fought side by side with his brothers in arms and every homecoming (возвращение на родину) was glorious and every time he shipped back out he did so with the determination that was going to make the world a better place.

But this is not a story about that soldier.

This is a story about the thing that he became.

The man in the white coat counts backwards from ten, all the way to one (один).

A sudden lightness crashes into him, clarity hitting him like a freight wagon (грузовой вагон). He does not know who he is. He does not know what he is. But he knows his purpose.

He is ready to comply.

 

 


End file.
